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SACHUSETTS BOSTON LIBRARY

THE WAY TO VICTORY

VOLUME ONE: THE MENACE

PHILIP GIBBS

THE WAY TO
VICTORY

BY

PHILIP GIBBS

Author of "The Struggle in Flanders," "The Battles
of the Somme," "The Soul of the War" etc.

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOLUME ONE
THE MENACE

new lar YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

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Copyright, 1919,
By George E. Doran Company

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

VOLUME ONE: THE MENACE

PAGE

Introduction ll

PART I
THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT

CHAPTER

I The Surprise Attack 41

II Rescued Civilians 54

III The Tunnel Trench to Bourlon Wood ... 59

IV The Battles of Bourlon Wood 67

V The German Counter-Thrust 93

VI From Gonnelieu to Gouzeaucourt 104

VII The Triumph of the Tanks 125

VIII The Heroes of the Twenty-ninth Division . .130

PART II
THE APPROACHING MENACE

I The Peace of the Snow *43

II The Message of Spring I53

III The Long New Line l69

IV Raids and Reconnaissances 183

PART III

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE

I The Storm Breaks 2°3

II Heroic Rearguards 225

III Arras to the Somme 234

IV The Valour of the Men 254

V

vi CONTENTS

PART IV
THE NORTHERN ATTACK

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Drive Across to Lys 283

II The Flanders Front 309

III The Panorama of Battle 319

IV A Day of Slaughter 331

V Nearest to Amiens 345

VI The Hills of Flanders 356

VII The French in Flanders 382

VIII The Failure of the German Offensive . . . 392

MAPS AND DIAGRAMS

PAGE

British Line After German Counter-Attack in the

Cambrai Salient, November, 1917 57

The Heights of Bourlon Wood 69

The Germans Outside Amiens, March, 1918 . . . . 238

Arras Battle Fronts, 1916-1918 248

German Attack in Flanders, April, 1918 287

The Threat to the Coast, April, 1918 310

Lines of German Advance After Flanders Offensive . 350

via

THE MENACE

THE WAY TO VICTORY

INTRODUCTION

In my last book of collected dispatches — "From Bapaume
to Passchendaele" — I dealt first with the German retreat
after the Somme battles to the shelter of their Hindenburg
line; then with the Arras battles which began with a strik-
ing victory and petered out into minor actions when our
troops, with grim perseverance and no light losses, contin-
ued to hold German divisions so that the French might
strike more freely elsewhere; and, in the third part, with
the battles in Flanders — those muddy, bloody battles of
last year — ending with the capture of the ridges. All that
fighting, so heroic, so costly, so disappointing as it seemed
in its immediate and apparent results when in March and
April of this year, 19 18, the enemy came sprawling back
over all the ground we had gained, must be remembered
in order to understand the happenings that followed — the
incomplete success of the Cambrai adventure in November,
the great retreat in March, the arrival of the Germans on
the Marne with their dreadful threat to Paris, and the
strategy of the French Generalissimo, the fine genius of
Foch, so patient in his waiting for the moment to strike
back, so terrific when he struck, leading up to the glorious
recovery and victories of the British armies in August and
September. For in war as in normal life there are no
isolated facts. Nothing happens that is not the direct con-
sequence of previous events and conditions, and that does
not lead like a chain of fate to results that follow by in-
evitable laws. The lack of complete success of the French

11

12 THE WAY TO VICTORY

offensive in Champagne under General Nivelle in the spring
of last year, 19 17, made our later battles around Arras an
apparent waste of time and life to us except in their effect
of wastage also upon German man-power, for many of the
enemy were killed and wounded in those days. This delay
and this wear and tear of our reserves hampered the plan
of campaign in Flanders, and were, in some measure at
least, the cause of our inability to reap the full fruits of
our successes in those frightful fields where, after the cap-
ture of the ridges, we might have gained back the Belgian
coast. But those dreadful battles of Flanders, tragic be-
cause of their cost in life and agony for many thousands
of our men in spite of the glory of their courage, were
the direct cause of many things that followed. They left
us weak for a time in the field. Our losses had been very
heavy (though Lord Northcliffe's estimate of 800,000 cas-
ualties in the year seems to me excessive), and the Gov-
ernment had not yet found means of filling up the gaps in
our ranks. Our infantry and gunners after months of
fighting in foul weather, and abominable conditions, were
tired to exhaustion, nerve-racked, spent, though they
goaded their spirit when the call came for further efforts.
What drafts came out were young soldiers untrained in
the needs of actual warfare, and relying only on courage,
which helped them and all of us through. And at that
time when we were weakest wre took over a longer line
right down to the Oise below St.-Quentin, by La Fere;
and the line we held from beyond Ypres to below St.-
Quentin was longer than we could hold in safety, without
much larger reserves than were then at the disposal of our
Commander-in-Chief, as soon as the enemy began to gather
his forces against us by bringing his divisions from Rus-
sia to the Western Front. The enormity of that menace
had not yet developed, though the shadow of it was creep-
ing up to us when at the end of the Flanders fight Sir
Julian Byng, commanding the Third Army, launched his
surprise attack in the Cambrai salient on November 20 of

INTRODUCTION 13

1 91 7. It was a daring plan ingeniously imagined and
brilliantly planned, and the only weakness of it was that it
had to be carried out by troops who had already been fight-
ing in hard battles so that they needed rest, and that no
strong reserves could be spared to follow through the first
advance to gain the fullest advantage of first success and
hold the captured ground against heavy counter-attacks.
Our Third Army had to cut their coat according to their
cloth, and there was no margin to spare. Everything de-
pended on surprise, and to achieve that was the task of the
Tank Corps. It was to be the supreme test of the Tanks,
which in the mud swamps of Flanders had had no chance
at all though they had done gallant and desperate things
there. For the first time they were to be used in large num-
bers in a wide battle array, and the enormous interest of
the experiment was whether they could do away with the
necessity of long preliminary bombardment — for the break-
ing of wire and trenches — which until then had prevented
all surprise attacks on a big scale. The Hindenburg line
was in front of them with 14-foot trenches protected by
wide belts of wire utterly impassable by infantry unless cut
through for their passage. If the Tank Corps failed it
would be almost a death-blow to the hopes of their enthusi-
asts. If they succeeded it would revolutionize our war-
fare and bring back the possibility of surprise and strategy
which had been killed for a time by aeroplane observation,
and by the registration of guns warning the enemy of our
concentrations against him. They succeeded gloriously.
They broke through the Hindenburg line and cruised out
into the open, and our infantry followed through the gaps,
and we saw open warfare again with troops moving be-
yond the shelter of trenches, and cavalry patrols scouring
through captured villages and rounding up large numbers
of prisoners ; and for war correspondents there were great
scenes to watch and describe more easily than in other bat-
tles— those of Flanders — where the view was more lim-
ited by intense shell-fire, and trench systems, and concrete

14 THE WAY TO VICTORY

pill-boxes stop. For a little while it looked as though we
should get Cambrai, but the inability of the cavalry to
sweep through on the first day in full strength gave the
enemy time to recover from his frightful shock and to bring
up his reserves for the defence of Bourlon Wood, Mceuvres,
and Fontaine Notre Dame, when our men were becoming
exhausted by their long fatigue with few reserves behind
them to relieve or support them. The bad luck of the cav-
alry was a poignant disappointment to every cavalry offi-
cer and man eager to ride out into the blue and to prove that
they are of supreme value in modern warfare when their
moment comes. It was no fault of their spirit that they
did not succeed to the full. The breaking of the bridge at
Masnieres by one of the Tanks, and the difficulty of find-
ing a crossing there, caused the first delay in the orders for
the cavalry to ride beyond Ribecourt where many squad-
rons had gathered. But the chief hindrance was the ene-
my's success in holding a line of trenches known as the
Rumilly switch line. It had been unoccupied after our
first break through the Hindenburg line, but there was a
race for it by German infantry and ours, and the enemy
running towards it from Cambrai won. The taking of this
switch line was considered a preliminary condition by the
cavalry generals, and when it was reported to them that
it had not fallen they issued orders cancelling the plans of
advance. Some Canadian cavalry — the Fort Garry Horse
— and some of our dragoons rode aher.d, not receiving these
orders, and had amazing adventures, and elsewhere vari-
ous cavalry units fighting mounted and dismounted did gal-
lant work, but the great cavalry drive did not happen, and
Cambrai did not fall. There is some evidence that one or
two of our patrols actually rode into this town — it comes
from German sources as well as our own — but if so it was
only on a forlorn hope. Nevertheless the first phase of
the adventure in the Cambrai salient was a fine success and
fully justified its plan. Apart altogether from the tak-
ing of many thousands of prisoners, and the breaking of

INTRODUCTION 15

the Hindenburg line, which was a sharp blow to the pride
of the German command, it proved that hundreds of Tanks
could be assembled secretly in spite of aeroplane observa-
tion, moving at night and taking careful cover, and that
there were wonderful possibilities of surprise and victory
by this means. All would have been well if we had been
able to hold the captured ground, and there would have
been no irony in the ringing of the joy bells in London.
But within ten days the enemy came back upon us with a
tiger's pounce. Using our own methods of assembling
troops secretly by night, and not revealing his intentions by
any preliminary bombardment or registration of guns, he
launched a powerful attack on the right flank of the salient
we had created and broke through it. It still seems a mys-
tery to the British peoples. They still imagine that some
fearful secret lurks behind all this in spite of all the details
given by myself and other war correspondents. That one
of our generals should have been caught in his pyjamas
seemed to them incredible, and for some queer reason that
simple fact stuck in their minds and seemed to confirm their
worst suspicions, though I know many officers who have
slept many times in their pyjamas in trench dug-outs with-
out mishap and closer to the enemy than this general,
whose headquarters were at that time far behind the front
line. There is no mystery about that set-back in the Cam-
brai salient, and I have told the facts in full detail. Owing
to the long strain upon our man-power throughout the
Flanders fighting, the heavy losses which had not been
made up from home, and the utter need of rest by divisions
who had suffered most, there were few men available to
relieve the divisions who were in line round the salient, or
to strengthen them by support in depth. Some of the same
divisions who captured Havrincourt and Trescault and the
Flesquieres Ridge, Masnieres, Marcoing, and Gonnelieu
on November 20 were holding the lines there on November
30, and were thinly strung out. The 55th Division on the
right, very much below strength after a long period of fight-

16 THE WAY TO VICTORY

ing, held a front of 13,000 yards chiefly by a series of posts
and strong points, and that is an enormous length of front
for any one division, while behind them there was very lit-
tle in support in case of need. The enemy gained his sur-
prise, and when without any preliminary warning of ar-
tillery registration, or any unusual movement seen by air-
scouts in daylight, he launched his attack in great strength
he was able to pierce through our right flank and strike
up to Gouzeaucourt before our headquarters staffs were
aware that they were in danger. Telephone wires were
cut, outposts were surrounded, and German machine-gun-
ners pushed through the gaps and worked forward rapidly.
The defence of Masnieres and Marcoing by the 29th Di-
vision, and of La Vacquerie further south, were astound-
ing episodes of human courage which should never be for-
gotten in history, though so few people remember, now
or know how, those men of ours fought until in some places
only a few living remained among their dead, and yet even
then some of these boys, haggard, blood-stained, wounded,
weak, under dreadful fire fought on to the last gasp, or
fell back still fighting rearguard actions. In this book I
tell that story, and what I tell is true. The enemy losses
without exaggeration were immense, especially in the north-
ern side of the salient, and the price he paid was too great
for driving us part of the way back, leaving us still on
high ground which he wanted. But our losses were heavy,
too, and in a few months we badly wanted those men and
any men.

It was in those few months between December and March
that a menace of dreadful things crept on apace against us
until at last it flamed up against our lines, and we were in
greater danger than we have ever been. Division by di-
vision the Germans transferred their troops from Russia
to the Western Front. Our Intelligence, which was really
wonderful throughout this time, knew of their movement
and arrival, week by week and month by month. They
knew and added up the figures and wrote their warnings

INTRODUCTION 17

to be on guard. In January there were 183 German di-
visions on the Western Front, about equal to the Allied
strength at that time. In March there were 207 German
divisions, giving the enemy a superiority of something like
150,000 bayonets. It is true that the Americans were com-
ing along, but those who were in France were not yet fully
trained to take part in the battle-line, and it was not until
after our retreat that the tide across the Atlantic bore a
rush of men which swelled into the great army which has
now achieved its first victories. So we were immensely
outnumbered. We were outnumbered on the Western
Front as a whole, and presently it became evident, or at
least probable, that the main shock of the German offensive
would in the first place come against the British front.
The evidence for this increased day by day. Our flying
scouts reported abnormal movements of troops on railways
and roads far back behind the German lines. They re-
ported new aerodromes established opposite our front, new
hospitals and field-ambulances, as though bloody battles
were expected, new ammunition dumps everywhere. Pris-
oners taken in our raids repeated the rumours in the Ger-
man trenches of an offensive on so vast a scale that it would
crush the British Army for all time and cut it off on the
coast, while the victorious German army swung and rolled
up the French southwards to Paris and beyond. Many
German soldiers did not believe all this possible. They re-
fused to be doped by the wild words of their officers and
by the veiled prophecies of their Press. But they believed
that it would be attempted, and that the German militarists
would stake everything on this last great gamble to secure
victory and peace. In the German Press, and in propa-
ganda for neutral countries, many sinister things were writ-
ten with intent to hearten German sympathisers and strike
terror among their enemies. There were blood-curdling
stories of a new gas so horrible in its widespread power of
death that the Kaiser had only been persuaded to allow its
use when the Empress besought him on bended knees to

18 THE WAY TO VICTORY

save their people by this means. There were dark hints
that the world would be staggered as never before by the
march of events which would end in the complete triumph
of the German armies, and the abject surrender of France
and Britain. We could afford to ignore those fantastic
tales, but behind them was the real truth of an assembling
power which would test our defences to the uttermost, and
the psychology of a people sick to death of victories which
achieved no end, aghast at their losses and increasing ruin,
but dragged and panting with the hope that by a last su-
preme effort peace might be imposed upon their enemies.
It is curious that in spite of the accumulating evidence of
enormous preparations for attack against our front, and
the warning of our Intelligence Corps who gathered this
knowledge and analysed it, and weighed it with careful
judgment, and co-ordinated a mass of minute facts all
leading to the same conclusion, there were many people well
informed of all this who refused to believe that it amounted
to anything more than gigantic bluff. Mr. Bonar Law was
not the only sceptic. The rank and file of the Army was
itself divided in opinion about the reality of the threat.
I talked to many distinguished officers at the Front, in
view sometimes of the German lines so quiet over there,
so suspiciously quiet, who had many reasons to give for
the explaining away of the evidence of impending attack
on a mighty scale. The intensive training in open war-
fare which was being practised by German storm troops
seventy kilometres behind their lines, was only what our
troops had to do when they came out of the line. The
increase in ammunition dumps was due to precautions for
defence. They would never dare to attempt frontal at-
tacks against our entrenched positions which were mar-
vellously strong and practically impregnable. And so on.
For my part going round our lines with the eye of an ama-
teur our defences did not seem so strong as all that, espe-
cially on the right of the line north and south of St.-Quen-
tin, and we seemed to be holding the line rather thinly.

INTRODUCTION 19

The men from one end of the line to the other were con-
temptuous of all German menaces. They had a magnifi-
cent optimism in their powers of defence, and in the
strength of their lines. They were sure that if the enemy
attacked in masses he would be slaughtered in masses.
They had that cheery confidence which has never deserted
the British soldier throughout this war, except in hours of
supreme tragedy, and has been the cause of some of our
weakness and of most of our strength. The French ar-
mies, as far as I could get a glimpse of their opinion, seemed
to think that if the German offensive materialized, half
its strength at least would break against them. But when
it began it was the full weight which struck us hard. It
was the weight of overwhelming numbers of German
storm troops highly trained in new methods of open war-
fare, in which our men were inexperienced, armed with a
fantastic number of machine-guns, and supported by heavy
concentrations of artillery. The German storm troops
were arranged in depth on a narrow front, divisions pass-
ing through divisions, and others following on behind and
again passing through, so as to maintain the first impetus,
keep up the pace of advance, and relieve the foremost
troops, who then fell behind for rest and reorganization
until their turn came again to go forward and pass through
the most advanced ranks. It was a method we had adopted
on a small scale at Wytschaete and Messines with absolute
success. But the enemy was able to do it on a large scale,
on a scale of man-power never seen before in the history
of war. They attacked us with 114 divisions against 48,
that is nearly 800,000 bayonets against something over
300,000, reckoning a division on both sides at 7000 in bay-
onet strength. That is all the mystery there is behind our
retreat in March. Undoubtedly mistakes were made dur-
ing the progress of the retreat which is, I suppose, one of
the most difficult operations in war. The difficulty of
keeping touch with corps and divisional staffs when all
wires were down and everything was in a state of flux,

20 THE WAY TO VICTORY

after the first break through must have led now and then
to confusion, delay in command, lack of contact between
one body of troops and another, of which the enemy with
great skill and audacity was quick to take advantage. It
is possible that among the troops themselves, faced often
with the horrible danger of having both their flanks ex-
posed by wide gaps between them and the troops on either
side of them, there was at times extreme fear of being cut
off for ever, so that they may have fallen back too rapidly
from lines which they might have held, and that here and
there among inexperienced men there was something like
panic. It would be ridiculous to suppose that in a retreat
like this incidents of that kind did not happen, and that all
our officers did the right thing at the right time — and every
time — and that all our men were so indifferent to their
peril that they did not "have the wind up," as they call it,
in the worst places and the worst hours. If they had been
like that they would not have been human, and the British
soldier is very human. But the truth remains and will re-
main for ever that against overwhelming pressure and in
the most difficult conditions of war, with men fighting day
after day without sleep or rest, until at last they were mere
dazed and stumbling wrecks upheld only by the last flicker
of their spirit, our Third and Fifth Armies retreated with-
out anything like a general panic, fought heroic rear-guard
actions all the way, inflicted frightful losses on the enemy,
held their lines intact at their journey's end, and defeated
the enemy's purpose of driving between us and the French
and putting us out of action. The courage of the men was
put to the supreme test of endurance, and most of them
did not fail, but in spite of bitter tragic losses held out
until they had brought the enemy to a halt on the lines of
the Ancre and the Somme. They were the men of the di-
visions who in the months of August and September of
this same year drove the enemy back to his old Hindenburg
lines and beyond, over many miles of country, storming
line after line, village after village, fighting a battle every

INTRODUCTION 21

day and going on again the next day, and defeating for
ever the German hopes of victory. But looking back on
March 21, and the weeks that followed, one remembers
them as a nightmare. Truly for a time it seemed as
though the bottom had fallen out of the world, our world,
and that all the sacrifice of our men, all the agonies of our
years of war, might end after all in defeat or something
like it. For the enemy had broken through lines which
many of us had believed to be impregnable, and was almost
at the gate of Amiens, threatening an advance to Abbe-
ville and the coast, and he was still very strong in num-
bers of men, and we were very weak. Up in Flanders
Rupprecht of Bavaria was sitting down with many fresh
divisions in his command, and we had few troops to hold
him back when his time came to strike. They were not
good days, and worse were to follow.

The enemy's first success in breaking our lines was due
to a new method of attack which has since been known as
"infiltration." It consisted in taking immediate advantage
of any weakness or gap in his enemy's line by concentrat-
ing troops in depth at that part, and forcing them through
until they had gone far enough to threaten the flanks of
the troops on either side of them, who at the same time
were being attacked frontally and were, therefore, con-
centrated upon their forward defences. Sometimes only a
few men with machine-guns would make their way through,
under cover of a sunken road, or an old communication
trench, or foggy weather, but at a signal that they had es-
tablished a post there, other machine-gunners and riflemen
would make their way to them stealthily and push a little
further forward and get further support in numbers, until
their sweep of machine-gun fire on the flanks, and even in
rear of our troops, would have a serious effect upon their
position and moral. For no troops in the world can ig-
nore a threat upon their flanks, and fight frontally with any
sense of security when there is hostile fire over their shoul-
der, and the enemy in unknown strength between them and

22 THE WAY TO VICTORY

the troops with whom they are supposed to be in touch.
That is exactly what happened on March 21 in more than
one sector of our line. On the Third Army front that gal-
lant division of Highlanders, the 51st, who have had an
extraordinary history since that day, having already made
their name at Beaumont Hamel in the old Somme battles,
at Arras in April of '17, and in the Cambrai salient in
November, were astride the Bapaume-Cambrai road, hold-
ing Boursies and Demicourt. On their right was the 17th
Division, and on their left the 6th, two of the finest of our
English divisions. Their battle defences were very strong
and they were sure of them. On their left the defensive
system was not so strong, and the first thing that was known
of grave peril on the morning of March 21 was when Scot-
tish officers, in battalion headquarters at Sole trench, down
on their left flank by Louveral Wood, found the enemy
close to them and surrounding them. The Germans un-
der cover of mist had penetrated into the Queant-Pronville
valley, had filtered down it in increasing strength, and was
turning the left flank of the 51st Division, held by the 6th
and 7th Black Watch, and the right flank of the 6th Di-
vision, by driving this wedge between them and thrusting
it deeper in by streams of machine-gunners. Their drive
was south-east behind Boursies and Doignies, and although
the 51st formed a defensive flank in a line called Sturgeon
Avenue, east of Boursies — most of the Black Watch had
been cut off in their system between the left boundary of
the division and Rabbit Alley — the enemy's penetration
continued by the wedge being driven deeper down, and he
got into Doignies about two o'clock in the afternoon after
heavy losses. His frontal attack against the 51st had made
no ground at all, but this outflanking movement threatened
them gravely. Doignies was retaken for a time, and then
lost again, by men of the 19th Division, and the next day
Morchies, on the left, which had been lost, was also re-
taken, but it was impossible to hold these places when the
enemy broke through Vaux Vraucourt and again exposed

INTRODUCTION 23

the left flank of the 51st and 19th Divisions. They had
already fallen back to the Hermies switch, and on the night
of the 22nd fell back again to the Ytres-Beugny line, and
once again, out of touch with troops on either side, as the
enemy was still outflanking them, to a line through Ban-
court and Villers-au-Flos, on the east side of Bapaume.
Soon afterwards the enemy was reported to be coming up
to Le Transloy by way of Lebceuf and Morval, and the
51st Division with the 62nd, the 19th, the 41st, and the
6th were all in danger of being cut off, and only extri-
cated themselves by rear-guard actions, often with the en-
emy on either side of the rear-guards, and desperate hold-
ing actions against unequal odds, while one body of troops
fell through another and took turns in fighting. They killed
great numbers of the enemy, but more came on and on, forc-
ing their way like water into any gaps between bodies of our
troops — and there were many gaps after the retreat had
started owing to the extreme difficulty of keeping touch —
and the German machine-guns were astonishing in the skill
and courage with which they carried out this plan of "in-
filtration."

What happened on the Third Army front was happening
in a more serious way down on our right, where the Fifth
Army was holding the lines. A break happened between
Gauchy and Itancourt, south of St.-Quentin and the south-
ernmost end of our line at Barisis on the Oise. On the left
of this sector of line was the 30th Division, with the 36th
(Ulster) in the centre, the 14th on their right, and lower
down below the German main thrust the 58th (London)
Division. The foremost lines were held by battle positions
formed by a series of redoubts in depth. One of those held
by the Ulster men was the Race-course redoubt, on the site
of the St.-Quentin old racecourse, with strong machine-gun
positions behind in Gruchies valley. There was no regular
system of trenches. The 30th Division on their left, made
up of Manchester battalions, held from just north of the old
Roman road to the St.-Quentin Canal, with Manchester Hill

M THE WAY TO VICTORY

redoubt and others in their forward positions, and behind
them machine-gun positions at Roupy and the Epine-de-
Dallon. The 14th Division on the right of the Ulstermen
were at Urvillers and in front of Essigny. On March 21
it was a foggy morning, and all this country was so en-
shrouded in mist that it was impossible to see further than
fifty yards ahead. That put all our rear machine-gun posi-
tions out of action until the enemy was close to them, pre-
venting a long-range barrage which had been designed ; and
indeed nothing was known in these positions until the enemy
was swarming round them. The first report received by the
30th Division was that the enemy had broken through on
both sides of the Epine-de-Dallon and Manchester redoubt.
The garrisons of those redoubts held out and fought to the
death, as I have told in this book, but grave news came that
the Germans had broken between the 14th and 30th Divis-
ions and were attacking Essigny Station. They gained pos-
session of Essigny and Contrescourt in spite of the desperate
defence of the garrisons in the station redoubt at Essigny,
and at the St.-Simon redoubt by the 61st Brigade of the 20th
Division, put at the disposal of the 30th. That night all
three brigades of the 30th crossed the St.-Quentin Canal,
blowing up the bridges behind them, and the 61 st Brigade,
now joined with them, were ordered to hold the bridgeheads
at Tugny and St.-Simon. But the enemy was still driving
between the 30th and 36th (Ulster) Divisions, now utterly
out of touch with each other, and a further withdrawal was
ordered to the Somme defences. The 14th Division was
outflanked completely, and there was no touch with it. In
a steady drive the Germans thrust past the left flank of the
Ulster men advancing from Jussy to Flavel-le-Martel, and
finding a gap in our line at Esmery Hallon. This was filled
for a time by 200 men from headquarters staffs, but the
Ulstermen were compelled to retreat through Guiscard, and
finally, after desperate actions in small bodies supported by
French troops along the Villers-Bretonneux road until the
division could only muster 300 fit men, they ended their re-

INTRODUCTION 25

treat east of Amiens. In the early morning of March 24 the
enemy broke into Ham, which had been held by the 89th
Brigade of the 20th Division, with stragglers from other
units and miscellaneous men from a corps school. On the
same day the Germans had reached a line through Athies
and Matigny, and their advanced patrols were threatening
the crossings of the Somme at Brie, and were fighting round
Peronne at Mont St.-Quentin. That was our most critical
and perilous time. If the enemy were able to seize the
Somme bridges to be blown up. As we have seen, the enemy
best line of defence would be broken and our armies would
be in the gravest jeopardy. Biaches-Brie and Sailly-Sallisel
had to be held at all costs, and the bridge at Brie and other
Somme bridges to be blown up. As we have seen, the enemy
was advancing steadily between the Villers-Bretonneux and
Roye roads, towards the crossing at St.-Christ against the
retiring rear-guards of the 30th and 36th Divisions, with the
6 1 st in support, while in the north the 2nd Division was
fighting back to Bucquoy and Achiet to the old Somme bat-
tlefields near Hebuterne. The troops who were fighting
back to the Somme crossings and trying to hold the enemy
there below Peronne belonged to our 19th Corps, and were
the 66th and 24th Divisions, with the 50th in reserve on
March 21. On the opening day of the battle they had been
holding the line from Gouzeaucourt, in the north, to Mais-
semy, on the left of the 30th Division above St.-Quentin.
What happened to the divisions below them happened also
to them. The enemy attacked with five divisions in depth
and two in reserve, drove heavily through the line to Tem-
pleux Gerard, north-west of Hargicourt, and captured that
village. On the second day they attacked Le Verguier,
where the Queen's fought to the death, and having taken
Vendricourt Chateau, after desperate fighting, pressed heav-
ily between Ervillay and Vermand. Ten of our Tanks and
the 15th Hussars dismounted, came to the support of our
infantry, but meanwhile a violent attack on their left at
Villers-Faucon caused a break in the line through the 16th

26 THE WAY TO VICTORY

(Irish) Division, and turned the flank of the 19th Corps.
With our 2nd Cavalry Division, including the 4th Dragoon
Guards, 9th Lancers, and 17th Lancers, they had hard fight-
ing at Roisel, and then fell back across the Somme, where
the 8th Division was holding the line. Most of the bridges
were blown up, but apparently one at St.-Christ was not
destroyed, and there is some doubt whether the bridge at
Brie was effectively broken in time to prevent a German
crossing. On the morning of March 25 two German di-
visions attacked between St.-Christ and Falvy, and men of
the 66th Division and others were forced back to Morchain
and Mesnil. The Somme crossings had been lost, and the
worst happened. The enemy had a clear road open to him
on the way to Amiens, and all our troops had to fall back
rapidly lest they should be encircled and cut off. Behind the
line of the Somme, round about Peronne and Roye, on the
way back to Amiens and Albert, many of our old trenches
had been filled up, here and there agriculture had been
started again under the direction of British officers — I shall
never forget the retreat of the steam-rollers and reaping-
machines from that district. We lay open to the enemy's
advance, and it was only their heavy losses and exhaustion
after their rapid progress which brought them to a halt
outside Villers-Bretonneux and Albert — that and the grim
defence of weak units from many divisions who held some
sort of a line until the Australians and New Zealanders,
followed by the French, were rushed up to their support.
For a while Amiens was defended only by a thin screen of
tired troops, among whom on the right of our line were,
stragglers, signallers, orderlies, clerks, dismounted cavalry,
and other odd units known as Carey's Force, because of the
officer sent down to command them, and for a day and night
at least it looked as though poor Amiens were doomed. Al-
bert had already fallen, and the enemy had all the old battle-
fields of the Somme in his clutch again. They were dark
days, and to those of us who were in the midst of all this

INTRODUCTION 27

there was no comfort but in faith and courage, and they
were strained.

There was a sad night in Amiens. It was a night of
white moonlight so coldly glittering that the pinnacles and
buttresses of the Cathedral were like silver, and the old
houses of the city with their steep roofs and plaster walls
were clear-cut under the stars, and flooded with that white
light except where their shadows were inky black. We were
sitting with many officers at dinner in the Hotel du Rhin
at half-past seven in the evening, after coming back through
Albert, where dead men and dead horses lay about the
ruins, and small bodies of British troops, utterly exhausted
after their days of retreat, were awaiting attack. There
was no gaiety in that dining-room. The enemy was ad-
vancing on Amiens, and some of us knew that there was
next to nothing to hold him back. The waiters — Gaston, the
old soldier who knew more strategy it seemed than all our
staff college, and appeared to have more courage than Coeur
de Lion, and Joseph, with his cry of "C'est la guerre,,, and a
philosophy of life which he expressed by cynical words
ending in high-pitched laughter — were silent and scared.
Gaston whispered over my shoulder, "Dites-moi, mon petit
caporal" — he called me that because of some fancied like-
ness to the young Napoleon — "vous croyez que Amiens sera
sauve? lis n'entreront pas?" I said, "They will never
come into Amiens again/' but there was a frightful doubt in
my heart when I said so.

Next morning there was an exodus of the people of
Amiens. The shopkeepers put their shutters up sadly be-
cause they had made much money from the British Army,
and because the business of their life was gone, and their
homes in the little parlours behind the counters must be
abandoned. I saw the girl of the bookshop putting up her
shutters. Her place of business had been a salon as well as
a shop. Hundreds of British officers, thousands of them
since the beginning of the Somme battles in July of 'i6,
had come here to chat with this vivacious girl and her smil-

28 THE WAY TO VICTORY

ing mother, who were full of wit and good-humour. She
turned as I passed on the other side of the street and waved
a hand in farewell, and I was struck by the look of courage
she had. All the restaurants where there had been such gay
little dinners in good days of the war, all the teas where
young British officers had flirted with pretty girls and en-
joyed a spell of civilization before getting back to the line,
all the shops where they had made friends with the people
who took their money, were closed up — if they were not
knocked down — and Amiens became a deserted city into
which presently large numbers of German shells came crash-
ing, and where on the way to the line or back from it some
of us ate our sandwiches in the wreckage of the public
gardens, where great shell-holes gape and iron railings lay
smashed, and trees lay across the flower-beds, and the
silence of this abandoned city, which many of us had loved
because of its old beauty and cheerful life, was broken only
by the tramp of soldiers marching through. Is it perhaps
to be counted unto the Germans for righteousness that they
did not destroy the Cathedral by gun-fire ? At any rate the
glory of Amiens was hardly touched. Some rare command
must have restrained them from that outrage. Amiens itself
did not fall in spite of the rumour on the morning after that
night of bombing that German cavalry were advancing down
the Villers-Bretonneux road. The Australians on the north
of the Somme, and the French on the south, arrived in time
to relieve or support our weak forces, and Foch with splen-
did faith rejoiced the heart of France by saying, "I guar-
antee Amiens."

It was not the end of the ordeal for British troops. A
new thunder-storm broke upon us in the north, where Rup-
precht's army had been waiting to strike, and the enemy
made a new tremendous effort to break through to the coast
and drive us into the sea. Even now I think that was our
worst peril and the period of our darkest days. It began on
April 9 with an attack in great force between Fleurbaix and
Givenchy against our .-;oth Division on the left at Fleurbaix,

INTRODUCTION 29

our 55th on the right at Givenchy, and the Portuguese in the
centre by Laventie and Neuve Chapelle. The Germans had
concentrated a mass of artillery on this front, and they
opened their attack with a barrage of appalling intensity and
depth, while they fired long-range high-velocity guns at all
our villages in back areas, as far back as Aire and St.-Pol,
twenty miles or so away, and ranged upon our cross-roads
and lines of communication. They blotted out the Portu-
guese front trenches and outposts, and then advanced into
the centre of the line held by these troops with columns of
infantry led by officers on horseback, and field-guns fol-
lowed by transport. The Portuguese were unable to sus-
tain the shock of this assault in overwhelming numbers and
broke, falling back in hard retreat through Laventie and
Richebourg-St.-Vast. Our centre, therefore, had been com-
pletely broken, but the wings still held, and Fleurbaix and
Givenchy were defended with magnificent courage by the
40th and 55th Divisions, who caused the enemy enormous
losses. As supporting troops to those two* gallant divisions
we had the 51st Highlanders, who had been sent up north
for a rest after their terrible time in the retreat, and the 50th
Division of Northumberland Fusiliers, East Yorks, and
Durham Light Infantry; and for several weeks these men,
joined later by some of the 25th Division, fought across the
Lys, where the enemy forced the crossings, with a stub-
bornness which has never been surpassed in war. They
fought continual rearguard actions against numbers of fresh
German troops, before whom they were but scattered hand-
fuls of desperate men. They fought until they were sur-
rounded, and after they were surrounded until they could
hardly stand for weariness, and were so thinned by losses
that battalions were down to companies, and companies but
little groups led by subalterns and sergeants, or grim souls
among their own ranks who would not surrender, but went
on fighting. The enemy crossed the Lys, stormed his way
through Estaires and Merville, struck up to Steenwerck,
surrounded Armentieres, and entered Bailleul and Meteren,

30 THE WAY TO VICTORY

while at the same time he swung down from the north
against our 9th (Scottish) and 29th Divisions, and parts
of the 19th and 25th Divisions, all very weak after many
battles, and coming down over the Flanders ridges which we
had gained by such sacrifice, regained Messines and
Wytschaete, and advanced upon Kemmel. Later the 1st
Australian Division which came down in a hurry towards
the Amiens front, was turned back and sent into the line in
front of La Moke, where they held the enemy, and during
many weeks of stationary warfare inflicted great losses upon
him. We were unable to send up reserves. But at the time
of greatest peril we had no reserves to spare after our losses
in the retreat over the Somme battlefields. Our Army was
exhausted, and their only strength was the spirit of those
men who responded to the call of the Commander-in-Chief
to fight with their backs to the wall until help should come.
There were bad things to see in those days, things which
seared the heart of men familiar with the ways of war.
For as I have told in this book the German advance across
the Lys was so sudden that many old people and young girls
and children were under the fire of their guns before they
were convinced that they were menaced, and from scores of
villages there was a hurried flight as in the first days of the
war in Northern France and Belgium, and for long leagues
the roads were crowded with these processions of fugitives,
stricken and homeless. Round the Mont-des-Cats and Bail-
leul I saw our batteries getting into action behind hedges
and in back gardens, while young mothers were packing
their children into perambulators, and old ladies wearing
their best bonnets and black gowns, because that was the best
way of saving them, left their cottages for ever — they have
been pounded into dust and ashes — and scuttled down lanes
and across fields where monstrous shells were bursting. One
pretty girl in Robecque, which was then under fire, had such
courage for the rescue of a little invalid sister and other
babes and a poor scared mother that I shall remember her
as a heroine of France — one of many in the land. Our sol-

INTRODUCTION 31

diers helped them as best they could, but they needed help
themselves in this desperate time when we were weakest.

Help came to them. It came when they were literally at
the last gasp, but just in time to avert a great disaster. The
first that came was a big force of French cavalry — squadron
after squadron of Dragoons — who rode hard for 120 kilo-
metres from the south of Amiens to Flanders. I saw their
lances tipped with the sun streaming through the lanes and
villages between Abbeville and St.-Omer, and drove close to
this long tide of horsemen and heard the panting of their
beasts, and looked into their hard, grim, lean-jawed faces,
all powdered with the dust of the roads which swept about
them like smoke. Then between Amiens and the sea there
came behind our line with magic speed a strong French army
of infantry — picked troops and splendid men. They came
in motor-lorries, 600 lorries in one column, and then more
and more, day after day, all driven by little monkey-like men
from Annam and Cochin China in steel helmets, and the
blue of all these French uniforms, which was like a winding
river behind our lines of khaki. It was good to see those
men, to see them watering our horses behind our lines, to
watch their transport with lean beasts and spider wheels
crawling up the roads, and their huge guns go by, and a
never-ending column of soixante-quinze' s and bodies of
French infantry in the shell-broken villages of Flanders
ready for action. Our men had support at last, and there
was strength instead of weakness between them and the sea.
All troops have their unlucky days. Thus, though the first
episode of French fighting in Flanders was the loss of Kem-
mel, the most important outpost of that line of hills which
was the last barrier between the enemy and the coast, yet in
heroic fighting later they held their line between Locre Hos-
pice and the Scherpenberg, and the enemy could not pass.
For a time the Germans were brought to a halt, and this
breathing space gave us time to dig new lines of defence,
line after line, which were seen by German airmen, so that
Rupprecht of Bavaria knew that it would cost him rivers of

32 THE WAY TO VICTORY

blood to break through now that the French were with us
in strength. He waited for events elsewhere, keeping
twenty-nine fresh divisions in reserve to strike us again
when the French should be called away.

The scene of action shifted. This time it was the Crown
Prince who struck, and the French who had to bear the
brunt of a surprise attack. On May 27 the French front on
the Aisne, between Soissons and Rheims, was stormed by
twenty-five German divisions, supported by seventeen others,
some of which came from the army of von Hutier. Four
British divisions, the 15th, 8th, 21st, and 25th, all of whom
had been heavily engaged in our battles since March 21, and
had suffered many losses, were on the right of this line be-
tween Craonne and Berry-au-Bac, and it was not until din-
ner-time on the evening before the battle that their com-
manding officers had any inkling of impending attack. The
enemy had assembled his troops and his guns with profound
secrecy and gained the full effect of surprise. The French
centre at the Chemin-des-Dames was broken, and the British
troops on the right wing had to fall back with them after
two hours of tremendous bombardment, followed by in-
fantry attacks in depth. They fell back, blowing up the
bridges, and the enemy pouring in fresh divisions against
the French struck down past Fismes, and reached the
Marne at Chateau Thierry on June 11 of this year 1918.

It was a blow at the heart of France, and a shiver passed
through the French people and our people whose fate was
bound up with theirs. During a few days of quietude on
the British front I went by motor-car to Paris, and all the
way from Beauvais, where in the early days of 1914 I heard
the German guns coming close, and saw the deserted streets
defended by broken glass and barbed wire, while a tall
Cuirassier stood by the bridge waiting to blow it up; there
were the same scenes of tragedy which I had hoped never to
see again, with people packing up their household furniture
and taking to the long trail of the roads to escape capture by
the enemy. So it was past Meaux and Senlis, and the vil-

INTRODUCTION 33

lages along the road to Paris. Dear God, it was sad to come
to Paris again in a time like this! Once before I had en-
tered Paris when the enemy was close to it, and walking its
deserted streets, past its shuttered shops, up to the Etoile
and the Arc-de-Triomphe, had prayed with a kind of pas-
sion that all this beauty might be spared, and that this great
city, whose people I loved, might never be entered by an
army of looters, nor suffer from the fury of their bombard-
ment. That peril passed in September of 1914, when Foch
struck on the Marne and the German tide was rolled back
to the Aisne. But after four years of heroic effort Paris
' was threatened again. Once again many of its people had
fled. Many of its shops were shut. And although there was
more life in Paris than in that September of the first year
of the war when it was a desert, it was easy to see the dis-
tress of the Parisians, the nervous tension which once more
had put these people on the rack, and the sense of fearful
expectation which brooded in every part of the city. I
walked from the Rue St.-Honore to the Boulevard St.-Ger-
main, and to the top of the Rue Cherche Midi at eight
o'clock on a sunny evening, and met only eight people. The
people of Paris kept indoors and they had troubled hearts.
A new menace had come to them. At the outset of the Ger-
man attack a fantastic thing had happened. Shells fell into
the city, killing women and children here and there, falling
into a church and a babies' creche. At the first explosions
Paris said, "It is a daylight raid," but no aeroplane could be
seen. Le Temps was the first to announce a long-range Ger-
man gun, some new and devilish contrivance. ."Fat Bertha"
they called this beast lurking in the forest of Coucy, and
after a time, according to the way of Paris, they made a
joke of it, and when a shell burst I saw midinettes and shop-
keepers running and laughing towards the place of the ex-
plosion. But the fear and threat that many other guns
might fire on Paris made many people leave with their wives
and children, and the shadow of the German army at Cha-
teau-Thierry crept over Paris and stayed there on the faces

34 THE WAY TO VICTORY

of its citizens. Foch waited. It was hard for him to wait
because he believes that attack is the best defence. But he
knew that his chance was coming, and that the Germans
were playing into his hands if only he could get enough
troops to strike. A powerful thrust between Montdidier and
Noyon, with the object of striking down to Compiegne, had
been thwarted by the stubborn defence of the French troops
there, supported by an American division, which fought
with splendid courage. The Germans had, therefore, left
themselves in a deep salient below Soissons and Rheims, and
they offered him weak flanks. After all their fighting
against the British they had not many divisions in reserve
except those in Rupprecht's army up north, and they be-
lieved Foch had so dissipated his strength that he could
not take advantage of their dangerous geographical position.
Foch had dissipated part of his army of reserve, that was
true. He had hated to do so, guessing what was coming, but
he had saved the coast by flinging up his men behind our
lines at the last moment possible, and now he would bring
them back again.

With the same magic by which they had appeared along
the British front they disappeared. Those long columns of
lorries driven by monkey-looking men tore back through the
dust, and the cavalry rode their horses hard down the same
roads, but the other way, and by rail and road the French
guns travelled to their own front again. From the Vosges
and from many parts of France, where they had been hold-
ing quiet sectors of the line or training in back areas,
another army was on the move. American divisions of
fresh and fine men came winding along the roads and lanes
up to Meaux and Villers-Cotteret, moving by night, secretly.
And down from the British front, very secretly too, went
three British divisions, the 15th (Scottish), the 62nd (York-
shires), and the 51st (Highlanders). The Generalissimo
of the Allied Armies had reconstituted his reserves, and on
July 20 he struck. During the worst time that had hap-
pened when the Germans were advancing to Chateau-

INTRODUCTION 35

Thierry an English statesman was in Foch's headquarters,
and he said to him :

"What do you think of the situation, sir?"

Foch was silent for a little while, and then he said with
the utmost simplicity :

"I cannot help pitying Ludendorff."

The English statesman was astounded, and then Foch
said:

"His task is much more difficult than mine."

He had a prevision of his counterstroke and faith in his
own judgment. He struck at the psychological moment,
neither too soon nor too late, and the enemy was taken by
surprise, and on both sides of the salient his lines were
broken, and his crush of men inside the salient, all ready
for the final blow on Paris, were caught between two pincers
and forced to retreat or to surrender en masse. Westwards
from Rheims, and eastwards below Soissons, and north-
wards across the Marne, the Allied Armies advanced fight-
ing against desperate resistance, but breaking it and driving
into the centre of the salient by Fere-en-Tardenois. There
were great captures in men and guns, and the Crown Prince
cried for help to Rupprecht of Bavaria. Rupprecht had
been clinging to his twenty-nine fresh divisions in reserve to
deal us a death-blow, but the plight of the Crown Prince
forced him to yield some of his troops, and as the Allied
pressure became greater between the Marne and the Aisne
he sent division after division to the Crown Prince's army,
and the threat against us withered away, and our turn to
strike was coming again.

It came on August 8, when the Tank Corps in full strength
assembled in darkness and in cover of woods, north and
south of the Somme, where on the north the Australians
were in full order of battle, and on the south the whole of
the Canadian corps had been transferred from the Arras
district to the line outside Amiens, between Villers-Breton-
neux and Hangard Wood, with the French on their right.

The greatest honour is due to the Australians. Ever

36 THE WAY TO VICTORY

since their arrival on the Amiens line they had taken the
offensive, and General Monagu, their corps commander, had
fought a series of small and brilliant battles, which had
gradually driven the enemy away from the approaches to
Amiens itself. Now, after all that fighting they expressed
themselves as willing and eager to begin an offensive move-
ment on a big scale, and they proved very quickly that they
had not cherished false illusions about their spirit and
strength.

Having the bad luck to be ill in England at this time I
missed the opening phases of our splendid recovery of the
ground that had been lost during our retreat in March, and
picked up the thread of history later when the enemy was
in hard retreat to his Hindenburg line, pursued with un-
tiring spirit by British troops to Bapaume, where I fol-
lowed them on that morning, and across the Somme battle-
fields, where I went up to them at Longueval and Delville
Wood which they had just captured, and round Peronner
where there was brilliant fighting by the Australians at Mont
St.-Quentin. I am told by Canadian officers that the first
morning of our offensive was an astounding sight as
column after column of men moved out of the early morn-
ing mists in the wake of large numbers of Tanks, whose
pilots and crews fought that day and for several days with
wonderful gallantry, smashing down nests of machine-guns,
rounding up bodies of German infantry, and taking all risks
in forward positions from which they came under the fire of
German anti-Tank guns which knocked some of them out by
direct hits. It was open warfare on a grand scale, real
open warfare of an old-fashioned kind, and masses of
cavalry with their pennons flying and their lances in rest
streamed across country in a wonderful pageant, riding
through the ruined villages, cutting off small woods and
copses in which Germans were still serving their machine-
guns, and reconnoitring the enemy's rear-guards. The
Canadian brigades advanced in depth, brigade passing
through brigade in the country north of the Amiens-Roye

INTRODUCTION 37

road, and breaking through the lines which the enemy tried
to hold by machine-gun power cleared a wide territory, in-
cluding the ruined villages of Bouchoir and Le Quesnoy
and Damery, close to the town of Roye itself, where they
were joined by the French. North of them the Australians
were equally triumphant and captured a large tract of
country south and north of the Somme until they were on
the outskirts of Peronne after hard and, here and there,
costly fighting. North of the Australians, English, Scottish
and Welsh divisions on the west side of the Ancre by Albert,
with the gallant New Zealand division whose record of
progress had been wonderful in its rapidity and staying
power, and as other British troops far north as the banks
of the Scarpe outside Arras began to move, and then
throughout the remaining weeks of August and the begin-
ning of September fought a continuous battle, driving the
enemy back from one position to another above and below
Bapaume, over all that old ground which was won first at
frightful cost in the first battles of the Somme, lost again in
the retreat of March this year, and won back in three weeks,
without heavy losses considering all our gains in prisoners
and ground, by the gallantry of men who had a big score
to wipe out, a prestige to win back, and a spirit of certain
victory. Nothing stopped them, though the enemy fought
hard and had a machine-gun power amounting in some
places to one gun to every four men. They did not stop,
though they *were nights and days without sleep, and tired
in every muscle and nerve. They were not inspired with
a passion of hatred for the enemy — that is not their mood —
it was not vengeance that spurred them on; they had no
blood-lust in their hearts whatever stay-at-home patriots
may like to think. They had a rough good-humour with
the prisoners they bustled back, and had a Bank Holiday
mood of geniality to all men after a day of good success.
But it was pride which was their goad, the pride of men
who had suffered the humiliation of retreat and were now
coming back, determined to come back, and not to be stopped

38 THE WAY TO VICTORY

before they had put the enemy in his own place again. Each
day of success cheered them on to another, and each
division was in competition with the troops on the right
and left, wanting to go one better, to take more prisoners,
to set the pace. And the greatness of their success, the
rapidity of this advance, the increasing demoralization of
the enemy under this eager pressure, rilled them with the
highest hopes now that they had got the enemy on the run.
This vision was in each man's eyes and heart, the splendid
vision of such striking victories that there would no longer
be the dreary vista of long years of war, but the end in
sight at last. So they went on, these English battalions of
ours who have had such rough days in four years' of war
without much fame or notoriety, whose sacrifice has been
enormous, who can hardly count the battles they have
fought, and whose comrades lie buried beneath the little
white crosses in that great graveyard of France which is
our field of honour. I saw the pageant of the day, the grim
pageantry of battle, on the day we broke the Drocourt-
Queant line, the strong switch of the Hindenburg line,
which the German command had ordered to be held at all
costs, but from which very early there came back thousands
of prisoners, carrying their wounded and eager for escape
from their own battle-line. The 2nd German Guards
laughed and cheered when fresh batches of their comrades
came down, and urged our men to go on fighting and take
more of them, so that the war might end more quickly.
Truly, it looked then as though the end might come more
quickly than one had dared dream or hope.

Alas! it may not end quickly even now. In spite of all
the prisoners we have taken since the beginning of our
counter-stroke in August, in spite of the arrival of the
American Army on the battlefields, and their brilliant suc-
cess in the St.-Mihiel salient, where for the first time they
fought a big battle of their own, and proved the quality
which we all knew they had, these fine, fresh, keen, and
modest men who have come with a young spirit into this

INTRODUCTION 39

war-weary Europe to fight for ideals which are less con-
fused than ours, clearer-cut, above old traditions, and old
jealousies, and old hatreds ; and, lastly, in spite of weaken-
ing German man-power and a growing despair of German
peoples, there may still be a long period of most bloody
fighting. The enemy will fight like a wounded tiger to pro-
tect his own frontiers, and by falling back under pressure
to shorter lines will maintain a long and desperate defence.
The machine-gun is a weapon very deadly in defence, and
by falling back on to switch lines, and organizing villages,
and making machine-gun emplacements in every bit of
ruin, rear-guards may delay the progress of a superior
enemy and make him pay heavy losses for advance. So if
we force the enemy to fight to the last ditch the way is still
long before he gets there, and peace is still at the end of a
far vista of hope. But Germany is already defeated in all
her ambitions and has the knowledge of the doom that is
overtaking her philosophy of force, and it is by the steady
courage and the immense sacrifice of our own troops, as
well as those of our Allies, that this overthrow of Ger-
many's menace to Europe has been assured.

PART I
THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT

The Surprise Attack

November 21, 1917
The enemy yesterday morning had a bitter surprise, when,
without any warning by the ordinary preparations that are
made before battle, without any sign of strength in men
and guns behind our front, without a single shot fired
before the attack, and with his wire — great belts of hide-
ously strong wire — still intact, our stroops suddenly as-
saulted him at dawn, led forward by great numbers of tanks,
smashed through his wire, passed beyond to his trenches,
and penetrated in many places the main Hindenburg line
and the Hindenburg support line beyond. Our attacking
troops were the 51st (Highland) and 62nd Divisions of
the 4th Corps, and the 6th, 12th, and 20th Divisions of the
3rd Corps, from north to south. The 29th Division passed
through the 3rd Corps when the attack had developed, and
the 56th (London) Division was in support of the 4th
Corps. The 36th (Ulster) Division was on the extreme
left, by the Canal du Nord, near Hermies.

It was a surprise to the enemy, and, to be frank, it will be
a surprise to all our officers and men in other parts of the
line, and to my mind it is the most sensational and dramatic
episode of this year's fighting, ingeniously imagined and
carried through with the greatest secrecy. Not a whisper of

41

42 THE WAY TO VICTORY

it had reached men like myself, who are always up arid
down the lines, and since the secret of the Tanks them-
selves, who suddenly made their appearance in the Somme,
last year, this is, I believe, the best-kept secret of the war.
The enemy knew nothing of it, although during the last
twenty-four hours or so certain uneasy suspicions seems to
have been aroused among his troops immediately in front
of the attack. But his Higher Command did not dream of
such a blow. How could the enemy guess in his wildest
nightmare that a blow would be struck at him quite sud-
denly— at that Hindenburg line of his, enormously strong
in wire, and redoubts, and tunnels, and trenches, and with-
out any artillery preparation or any sign of gun-power be-
hind our front ? It is true that he had withdrawn many of
his guns from this quiet part of the front, but until that
wire of his was cut in the usual way by days of bombard-
ment and after artillery registration which gives away all
secrets, he had every right to believe himself safe — every
right, though he was wrong. He did not know that during
recent nights great numbers of Tanks were crawling along
the roads towards Havrincourt and our lines below the
Flesquieres Ridge, hiding by day in the copses of this
wooded and rolling country beyond Peronne and Bapaume.
Indeed, he knew little of all that was going on before him
under cover of darkness.

For our Generals and Staff Officers directing this opera-
tion there were hours of anxiety and suspense as the time
drew near for the surprise attack. It was the most auda-
cious adventure, and depended absolutely on surprise. Had
the secret been kept? It looked as though the enemy sus-
pected something a night or two ago, when he raided our
trenches and captured two or three prisoners. Had those
men told anything or had they kept the secret like brave
men ? All was on the hazard of that. It was probable that
night sentries had heard the movement of traffic on these
quiet, silent nights — the clatter of gun wheels over rough
roads, the rumble of transport behind the lines. But his

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 43

wire was still uncut, and no new batteries revealed them-
selves, and that was the thing which might lull all his
suspicions. To attack against uncut wire has always been
death to the infantry, and every time till this it has been
the guns' job. We know now that, whatever suspicions
were aroused, the surprise was made yesterday morning.
We caught the enemy "on the hop," as the men say, and in
spite of uneasy moments in the night they had no proof of
what was coming to them and no time to prepare against
the blow. Some thousands of prisoners have been taken,
and most of them say that the first thing they knew of the
attack was when out of the mist they saw the tanks ad-
vancing upon them, smashing down their wire, crawling over
their trenches and nosing forward with gun-fire and ma-
chine-gun fire slashing from their sides. The Germans
were aghast and dazed. Many hid down in their dugouts
and tunnels, and then surrendered. Only the steadiest and
bravest of them rushed to the machine-guns and got them
into action, and used their rifles to snipe our men. Out of
the silence which had been behind our lines a great fire
of guns came upon them. They knew they had been caught
by an amazing stratagem, and they were full of terror.
Behind the tanks, coming forward in platoons, the infantry
swarmed, cheering and shouting, trudging through the
thistles, while the tanks made a scythe of machine-gun fire
in front of them, and thousands of shells came screaming
over the Hindenburg lines. The German artillery made but
a feeble answer. Their gun positions were being smothered
by the fire of all our batteries, and there were not many
German batteries, and the enemy's infantry could get no
great help from them. They were caught. German officers
knew that they had been caught, like their men, like rats
in a trap. It was their black day.

I think all our men felt the drama of this adventure and
had the thrill of it — a thrill which I believe had departed
out of the war because of the ferocity of shell-fire and the
staleness of war's mechanism and formula of attack. To

U THE WAY TO VICTORY

me it seemed the queerest thing to be on the roads again
down south, where we followed the Germans up in their
retreat in March of this year, and to pass over the Somme
once more, to reach the first villages of the old war two
years ago, and then the great track of that desolate, de-
stroyed country where the enemy in his retreat blew up
every village, cut down the trees, and laid waste to all the
countryside. A few days ago I was looking at Passchen-
daele in the mist. Could it be real that yesterday morning
at dawn I was passing through Peronne, with the first pale
light of the sky upon its ruins, across the wooden bridges
and into that square where the Royal Warwicks came first
to look upon the German destruction of a fair little city?
The houses were burning when I went in the first time.
Only their ashes remained to-day, but it was stranger now
after Passchendaele to come back for this other battle
which had come so swiftly and so stealthily.

The battle had begun and our men had already gone away
to the Hindenburg line when I went forward through the
thistles — it was startling to see the absence of mud and
shell-craters — and walked over to the village of Beau-
camp and the front-line trenches from which our men were
attacking. Just to the left of me was the brown earth of
those newly dug assembly trenches — I think they must have
been dug in the night — and a little beyond the white parapets
of the Hindenburg line and beyond that again for a few
hundred yards the villages of Ribecourt and Flesquieres,
towards which our men were fighting. Behind me were our
field-batteries and heavies through which I had passed.
They were not in hiding, but in full view of the astonished
enemy, and firing an intense bombardment, so that the air
was filled with the scream of the shells and with the fright-
ful thumping of the fire, and one's ears were deafened. For
miles the white mists of the early morning were thrust
through with gun-flashes, and having left the Ypres salient
where it seemed to me we had most of our guns, it was
astounding to see so many batteries here.

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 45

From the ruins of Beaucamp I walked across to the Fles-
quieres Ridge. To the left of me was the wood of Tres-
cault, and higher up Havrincourt Wood and the chateau
of Havrincourt, which is still standing, though in ruin,
outside the village where there are roofless houses and up-
right walls, unlike the villages in the Flanders fighting,
which have only a stone or two and a stick or two to mark
their site. The battle picture was the most wonderful
thing I had seen until then in this war — wonderful because
very strange. War in South Africa, before intense bom-
bardments as we know them had been invented, must have
been like this. The country in our lines and the enemy's was
rolling and green, unpitted by those great craters which
make the Flemish battlefields. For miles it was dotted
about with camps, horses, guns, gun-limbers, transport, and
all the movement of an army in action. Numbers of Tanks
were on the battlefield, resting a while for another advance
— strange grey masses in the pale light of the morning,
scarcely visible at any distance.

I spoke to one of the pilots.

"How are you doing ?"

"We are giving them merry hell," he said; "it is our
day out."

He was thoroughly pleased with himself, and only sorry
that his tank was temporarily indisposed.

As I stood looking down on the battle, seeing only the
gun-fire and nothing of the infantry in the thistles, though
I was very close, I heard the awful sweep of machine-gun
fire from the flanks of the Tanks. It was answered by ma-
chine-gun fire from enemy redoubts in Lateau Wood, where
there was heavy fighting going on, and in Flesquieres vil-
lage on the height of the crest in front of where I stood by
Beaucamp, and from the direction of Havrincourt. It was
a very dreadful sound, in one steady blast of fire from
many of those weapons — from hundreds of them — and
broken into by the sharp staccato hammering, like a coffin
maker with his tacks, from single machine-guns closer tc

46 THE WAY TO VICTORY

our captured ground. Hardly a shell-burst came from the
enemy's side. I think I saw only a dozen big shells burst
anywhere near our batteries, though the fire of shrapnel
was greater over our lines of advance — greater, but with
nothing like the intensity of the battle up north. It was
clear at a glance that the enemy was weak in artillery. One
of our battalions, the Royal Fusiliers, gained their objectives
without a single casualty. Other battalions of English
county regiments had very light losses, and they were
mostly from machine-gun bullets. At the field dressing-
station on the southern part of the attack they had only re-
ceived 200 walking wounded by eleven o'clock in the morn-
ing— five hours or so after the battle began.

They were very few as battles go now, but I hated to see
those poor fellows coming out of the fighting and making
their way down in long, long trails to the dressing-station.
Some of them could hardly hobble, and every few hundred
yards had to sit down and lean up against the bank of a
sunken road. Some of them were helped down by German
prisoners, and it was queer to see one of our men with his
arms round the necks of two Germans. German wounded,
helped down by our men less hurt than they, walked in
the same way, with their arms round the necks of our men,
and sometimes an English soldier and a German soldier
came along together very slowly, arm in arm, like old
cronies. Most of the prisoners on my side of the battlefield
were from the 20th Landwehr Division, which had relieved
the 54th overnight. They were Brunswick men, and oldish
fellows. Through the fields of thistles came single figures
and little groups of wounded, and on the sides of some of
the tracks were groups of prisoners with their guards, and
on the ground badly wounded men on stretchers waiting for
relays of stretcher-bearers or ambulances.

Some of the ambulance drivers were wonderful, and
drove within a few hundred yards of the battle to pick up
the fallen men. In spite of their pain and weariness, the
wounded always had a cheery word to say. "How is it

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 47

going?" I asked, and man after man said: "Oh, it's splen-
did ; we're doing grand ; the boys are going straight on."

One man, a Cockney fellow wounded in the leg, kept a
group of comrades halted for a rest on their way back in
roars of laughter as he described his adventures of the
morning, and how he was hit by a German sniper who
suddenly appeared out of the trench. He used lurid lan-
guage, but was so comical and honest a fellow that a padre
standing near joined in the shouts of laughter that followed
his monologue. This padre and others went very close to
the lines with hot coffee and brandy in their flasks to meet
the wounded and help them.

One of the wonders of the day was the work of our air-
men. Just after dawn they came flying overhead so low
that they seemed to make a breeze over my steel hat, so
low that they waved hands to the infantry and shouted
cheery words to them as they went through the enemy's
lines. In the air the enemy was stone dead yesterday morn-
ing. He had been caught napping in the sky, as well as on
the earth.

I am not allowed to give our exact gains to-day, and it is
not well perhaps that the enemy should know them just now.
But in a little while I hope to tell the whole story from start
to finish, when it will, I hope, gladden people who have
been sadly tried by bad news of late from other fronts. In
strategy, it seems to me the battle may prove the best ad-
venture we have had, and the enemy was utterly deceived.

Wednesday Night
In my earlier message, which was held back for military
reasons of the soundest kind, I was able to give only the
outline and the beginning of the most striking strategical
blow we have ever inflicted on the enemy. Now, after more
hours spent in the area of fighting at Ribecourt and the
Flesquieres Ridge, with a battle in progress to the left where
the great Bois de Bolnon dominates the ground, I am able

48 THE WAY TO VICTORY

to give more details about this dramatic adventure of our
troops and there is no longer need of secrecy.

I have already told how we surprised the enemy by the
stealthiness of our preparation, by the absence of all shell-
fire from the batteries moved up to new positions in the
darkness, and by the skilful distribution of all bodies of
troops in well-chosen positions. What I was not able to
tell earlier was that a mass of cavalry was also brought up
and hidden very close to the enemy's lines, ready to make a
sweeping drive should the Hindenburg line be pierced and
broken by the advance of the tanks over the great belts of
barbed wire and the deep wide trenches of the strongest lines
on the Western Front. Yesterday I saw the cavalry in all
this country waiting for their orders to saddle up and ride
into the blue and take their first great chance. They be-
longed to the 5th and 1st Cavalry Divisions, with the 2nd
Cavalry Division in support. I was astounded to see them
there, and was stirred by a sharp thrill of excitement not
without some tragic foreboding. Because, after seeing
much of war on this front of ours, and coming straight
from Flanders with its terrifying artillery and frightful
barrages, it seemed to me incredible that, after all, the
cavalry should ride out into the open and round up the
enemy; and I had seen the Hindenburg line up by Bulle-
court and Queant, and knew the strength of it and the depth
of the barbed-wire belts that surround it. The cavalry were
in the highest spirits and full of a tense expectation. Young
cavalry officers galloped past smiling and called out a cheery
good-morning like men who have good sport ahead. In the
folds of the land towards the German lines there were thou-
sands of cavalry horses massed in parks, with the horse ar-
tillery limbered up and ready for their ride. All through
yesterday morning infantry officers and men taking part in
the advance asked the question, "When are the cavalry going
through?" and then I heard the news, "The cavalry are
through," and with all my heart and soul I wished them luck
on the ride. This morning very early, in a steady rain and

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 49

wet mist, I saw squadrons of them going towards the fight-
ing-line, and it was the most stirring sight I have seen for
many a long day in this war, and one which I sometimes
thought I should never live to see. They rode past me as
I walked along a road through our newly captured ground,
and across the Hindenburg line. They streamed by at a
quick trot, and the noise of all the horses' hoofs was a
strange rushing sound. The rain slashed down upon their
steel hats, and all their capes were glistening, and the mud
was flung up to the horses' flanks, and as, in long columns,
they went up and down the rolling country and cantered
up a steep track, making a wide curve round two great mine-
craters in the roads which the enemy blew up in his retreat,
it was a wonderful picture to see and remember. A small
body of Canadian cavalry had already gone ahead, and had
been fighting in open country since midday yesterday, after
crossing the bridges at Masnieres and Marcoing, which the
enemy did not have time to- destroy. They had done well.
One section rode down a battery of German guns and cap-
tured them, and a patrol had ridden into Flesquieres village
when the Germans were still there, and others had swept
round German machine-gun emplacements and German vil-
lages, and drawn many prisoners into their net.

For strange, unusual drama, far beyond the most fan-
tastic imagination, this attack on the Hindenburg lines be-
fore Cambrai has never been approached on the Western
Front, and the first act began when the Tanks moved for-
ward, before the dawn, towards the long, wide belts of wire
which they had to destroy before the rest could follow.
These squadrons of Tanks were led into action by the gen-
eral commanding their corps, who carried his flag on his
own Tank — a most gallant man, full of enthusiasm for his
monsters and their brave crews, and determined that this
day should be theirs. To every officer and man of the
Tanks he sent an order of the day before the battle, in most
noble words, calling upon his men for their utmost devo-
tion and service. They moved forward in small groups,

50 THE WAY TO VICTORY

several hundreds of them, and rolled down the German wire
and trampled down its lines, and then crossed the deep gulf
of the Hindenburg main line, pitching nose downwards as
they drew their long bodies over the parapets, and rearing
up again with their long, forward reach of body, and heav-
ing themselves on to the German parados beyond. The
German troops knew nothing of the fate that menaced them
until out of the gloom of the dawn they saw these great
numbers of grey, inhuman creatures bearing down upon
them, crushing down their wire, crossing their impregnable
lines, firing fiercely from their flanks, and sweeping the
trenches with machine-gun bullets.

A German officer whom I saw to-day, one out of thou-
sands of prisoners who have been taken, described his own
sensations. At first he could not believe his eyes. He
seemed in some horrible nightmare and thought he had
gone mad. After that, from his dug-out, he watched all
the Tanks trampling about, and scrunching down the wire,
and heaving themselves across his trenches and searching
about for machine-gun emplacements, while his men ran
about in terror trying to avoid the bursts of fire, and crying
out in surrender.

"What could we do?" said this officer; and others, "We
could do nothing — we were amazed by the mobility of the
Tanks, by their dreadful power, and our men would not
stand against them.,,

All the German officers express their admiration of the
attack, both by the Tanks and the infantry, and of the
strategical idea of it. "A brilliant attack," they say; and,
after all, they know best as the victims of it.

November 21
English troops of the 62nd, 6th, 20th, and 12th Divisions;
Irish of the 36th (Ulster), and Scottish troops of the 51st
(Highland) Division went behind the Tanks, in the great
advance, cheering them on, laughing and cheering when they
saw them get at the German wire and eat it up and then

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 51

head for the Hindenburg line and cross it as though it were
but a narrow ditch. Some of the German troops kept their
nerve and served their machine-guns, firing between the
Tanks at the infantry, but the Tanks dealt with them and
silenced them. Some of the German snipers fired at our
men at a few yards, and the infantry dealt with them master-
fully. But for the most part the enemy broke as soon as
the Tanks were on them and fled or surrendered.

A few of the Tanks had bad luck, and I saw these cripples
this morning where they were overturned by shell-fire or
had become bogged. Elsewhere I saw one or two which
had buried their noses deep into soft earth, and lay over-
turned or head downwards over deep banks down which
they had tried to crawl. But the Tank casualties were light,
and large numbers of them went ahead and fought all day
up the Flesquieres Ridge, and round the chateau of Havrin-
court, where the enemy held out for some time, and across
the bridges of Marcoing and Masnieres, and up to the neigh-
bourhood of Noyelles and Graincourt and beyond Ribe-
court. Isolated battalions of German infantry belonging to
the 20th Landwehr and the 54th and 9th Reserve Divisions
attempted counter-attacks and fought bravely at Havrin-
court Chateau and in Lateau Wood on the right, and in
Flesquieres village, where the Highland Territorials of the
51st Division were held up by fierce machine-gun fire yes-
terday afternoon. This defence of the village on the ridge
was a serious impediment to our general advance, and a
special attack was organized early this morning, which was
carried out in a model way by Tanks and cavalry and skir-
mishers of the English and Scottish troops, and the infantry
following in open order. The village was stormed this
morning, and the ridge was cleared, as I found when I
went up to Ribecourt, where still German snipers were con-
cealed firing at our men passing along the road. All about
Flesquieres the fighting was fierce, and many gallant things
were done by our men, and especially by the 2nd Durham
Light Infantry, who charged seven German guns in action

52 THE WAY TO VICTORY

which had been firing at point-blank range on our advancing
Tanks. The Durhams captured the guns and killed the gun-
ners. At Primy Chapel the 1st West Yorks did a similar
exploit, and with great heroism charged and captured three
77's. Before five yesterday afternoon the crossings at Mar-
coing and Masnieres and been secured, and our troops
of the 29th Division were moving forward steadily, gath-
ering in parties of prisoners and occupying the villages. In
three at least of these villages they found numbers of French
civilians, who came out rejoicing to meet their liberators.
About 450 of these people were found in Masnieres, and I
am told that in another village there were more than a
thousand. Many of them are now on their way back to
safety behind our lines.

By half-past five English troops of the 29th Division who
had been fighting heavily in Lateau Wood had cleared this
position, and the snipers had been mopped up in Ribecourt
by the 6th Division. The 4th Dragoon Guards had reached
Nine Wood and Noyelles, where in the village the enemy
fled at the approach of the Tanks. At half-past eight in the
evening a counter-attack was reported upon English troops
on the left, and then came the account of the charge of the
Dragoon Guards against the guns near Noyelles, when they
took forty prisoners and brought in the guns. Fighting
ceased for most part of the night which closed in upon our
infantry and cavalry and Tanks, but after this morning's
dawn they were all on the move again, going forward still
further into this strange open country where the grass
grows and woods are living and French civilians are in vil-
lages which until yesterday morning were Avell behind the
German lines and almost untouched by shell-fire.

On the left of this advance to-day there was heavy fight-
ing, and when I was in that neighbourhood shortly after the
earth had lightened for the day there was an incessant sweep
of machine-gun fire, never ceasing for hours, as the Tanks
engaged the enemy's machine-guns and redoubts, and the
cavalry and infantry swept toward those positions. Behind

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 53

our lines our Army was on the move, and every man was
working with new spirit and energy because of this move-
ment, and was filled with enthusiasm because of our won-
derful surprise to the enemy in his strongest lines. It was
this effect of surprise which pleased our men most. "This
is the sort of war we like," they said; "we have caught old
Fritz bending." That surprise and the absence of high ex-
plosives from hostile artillery seemed to bring back for once
the older style of war when it was a great though always a
bloody adventure.

It was dead quiet in Ribecourt village, though snipers
were round about it, I am told. When I drew near to it, I
wondered to see such a place in the battlefields. It was not
like the "villages" of the Somme and Flanders. It had real
houses standing, real walls, real roofs, little red-brick houses
and villas, old grey barns, and whitewashed farmsteads,
gardens, and garden gates. It seemed quite untouched by
war at a thousand yards, but when I went closer and into it,
I saw that this was partly an illusion, and that there were
shell-holes in the walls and in the roofs, and that some of
the houses were gutted, and that it had been "unhealthy"
enough under our guns, to drive the enemy's garrison under-
ground into deep dug-outs and concreted tunnels. I went
down into these places and saw how the enemy had left
all his goods behind him in his flight, his machine-guns and
ammunition, his revolvers and field-glasses now the property
of English and Scottish soldiers, his picture postcards, and
even, poor devil, his love letters. One dug-out I went into
had been a machine-gun redoubt, very strong and well built,
and arranged perfectly for comfort and defence. Nine
prisoners were dragged out of this place, but somehow they
had managed to destroy or hide their machine-guns, though
not the accessories and ammunition of their weapons. I
have no time to write more of what I saw to-day and yes-
terday— strange, unforgettable pictures of war in the open,
but I would like to finish my message with a tribute to
General Sir Julian Byng and all the officers under his com-

54 THE WAY TO VICTORY

mand who devised and organized this bold adventure — real
strategy of a most brilliant character — and kept it secret un-
til the attack was launched by skilful plans. To General Sir
Julian Byng, who commanded the Canadians before and
after the capture of the Vimy Ridge before he succeeded
General Allenby to the command of the Third Army, and to
his Staffs of the Army and the corps, a great share in the
honour of these days is due, as well as to those officers and
the men who are now going through the rain and the mists
in this new phase of open warfare.

II

Rescued Civilians

November 22
In the break made in the Hindenburg line our infantry,
cavalry, and Tanks are still active, and there was heavy
fighting this morning up near Bourlon Wood and the vil-
lage of Fontaine-Notre-Dame, to the east of it, and not
much more than two miles away from Cambrai. This vil-
lage was entered yesterday afternoon by a combined opera-
tion of Tanks and cavalry, who captured a number of pris-
oners, and released over a hundred civilians. These people
were overjoyed when our men had delivered them from the
enemy, and to show their gratitude they set about making
coffee for the officers and crews of the Tanks, surrounding
the Tanks themselves and expressing their astonishment at
these strange machines, of which they had heard only queer
fantastic tales from German soldiers. This morning, when
I went up to the Front, I met the first crowd of liberated
people and felt as all of us do the same emotion which came
to us in March of this year, when, after the German retreat
east of Bapaume and Peronne, we met the civilians who,
since the beginning of the war, had been in the hands of the
enemy and under his rule. The people I saw to-day — gath-

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 55

ered together in a ruined village in the heart of all these new
scenes of war, with a tide of cavalry streaming up the roads,
with Tanks crawling on the hillsides and guns firing across
the open fields, and new batches of German prisoners tramp-
ing down under escort, muddy, haggard, dazed by the swift
turn of fortune's wheel, which had flung them into our
hands when they seemed so safe behind their great lines —
were all from Masnieres, near to Marcoing, where 450 of
them had awaited the coming of the English in feverish ex-
citement as soon as they heard the approach of our advance-
guards. They were pitiful groups of men, women, and
children, pitiful because of their helplessness in this corner
of the war, among the guns. Some of the women had
babies with them, in perambulators and wooden boxes on
wheels, into which, also, they had tucked a few things from
their abandoned homes. Some of them were young women,
neatly dressed, but all plastered with mud after their tramp
across the battlefields, and woefully bedraggled. Some of
the little girls had brought their dogs with them, and one
child had a bird in a cage. There were sturdy peasants
among them, and old, old folk, with wrinkled faces and
frightened eyes because of this strange adventure in their
old age, and young men of military age, who had not been
taken away, like most of their comrades, for forced labour,
because their work was useful to the enemy in their own
district, as in the case of a good-looking young barber, to
whom I talked, and who had shaved German officers and
men for three years in Masnieres. These people looked
woebegone as they waited in the ruins for English lorries
to take them away to safety, but in their hearts there was
a great joy, as I found when I spoke to them, but they had
a bitter hatred of the enemy because of the discipline put
upon them, and their servitude, and most of all, and all in
all, because he is the enemy of their country and the de-
stroyer of their land and blood. They told me that after
the coming of the Germans, in the early days of 1914, when
the Uhlans entered Masnieres and fought with French and

56 THE WAY TO VICTORY

English cavalry at Crevecceurt where our cavalry was again
fighting yesterday, they had no liberty and no property.
The Germans requisitioned everything they had almost —
their pigs and their poultry, and their grain and their wine.
If a peasant hid a hen he was heavily fined or put in
prison. If he was discovered with a bottle of wine he was
fined ten francs or put in prison. In Mesnieres there were
some big, fine houses, like that of M. Millais, a rich manu-
facturer, full of good furniture and pictures. They were
stripped and left bare. The very floors were taken up, and
in all the little houses there was a search made for any bit
of lead piping, for any bit of brass or metal. The civil
population were fed almost entirely by the American Relief
Committee, and after the entry of America into the war by
the Spanish-Dutch Committee, which carried on the work.
"Without that," they told me, "we should have starved."
The men were all put to work for their enemy in fields or in
the workshops, and women were made to sweep the roads, to
wash the dirty linen of the German soldiers, to clean out
rooms which were filled and refilled with vermin of the
trenches. The commandants of the village were generally
young lieutenants, very supercilious, very strict, but on the
other hand not brutal or unjust. They were hard with the
French people, as they were hard with their men.

The Mayor of Masnieres, with whom I spoke to-day, said
that there is no doubt, no shadow of doubt that the German
people are suffering from the most severe privations, from
real hunger so much that the officers often address the men
on parade and in their lecture-rooms, and tell them that
the courage of Germany is greater at the back than at the
front, and that the soldiers must stand firm because they
are suffering less than the people at home. Other men told
me the same thing to-day. Among the civilians was a
German soldier in the field-grey tunic, under civilian clothes,
though a Frenchman of Lorraine like another German sol-
dier with him, who was an Alsatian. According to the story
of the Lorrainer he served in his own province during the

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 57

Line on Nor. 2oQ mit&m*t
ft >> Z>ec 4-&aataafm*

»> " Dec T^lmi^mm rt40yZZ2*SX\
Original Line J-Lxjj-ja.^yg-^pJJJjj|g

o Miles %

J} Heights in Metres

BRITISH LINE AFTER GERMAN COUNTER ATTACK IN
THE CAMBRAI SALIENT, NOVEMBER, 1917

58 THE WAY TO VICTORY

greater part of the war, and saw the extreme hunger of the
people there. When he was sent to the Western Front he
determined to escape, and saw his chance two days ago,
when we broke down the Hindenburg line, and advanced
upon Masnieres. He hid himself among the civilians and
disguised himself in civil clothes, and stayed in a barn
until our men entered the village. The first news that came
to these people of the change that was upon them was when
they heard the firing of our guns on Tuesday morning, and
later the sound of rifle shots and machine-gun fire. The
German soldiers, about 340 of them, in Masnieres, were
thrown into a panic, many of them lost their heads utterly
and ran about like doomed men. But others went down to
the bridgehead, under the orders of their officers, and de-
fended the machine-gun emplacements on the canal bank.
The civilians could see English soldiers on the other side of
the canal firing with rifles and machine-guns, and then at
about eleven in the morning they saw what seemed to them
strange beasts crawling forward to the bridge. They were
the Tanks, and they came forward very steadily, and the
leading Tank advanced on to the bridge, which broke down
under its weight. As they did so the German soldiers
broke, and many of them fled ; but it was not until five min-
utes before the English entered the village that the last two
German machine-gunners left the bridgehead, and retreated.
For some time German riflemen sniped from houses and
barns, and some English field-guns were still firing into
Masnieres. The French civilians were very frightened, and
took refuge in their cellars, but they were buoyed up with
the hope that their liberation was at hand, and then they
rushed out to greet their liberators, weeping with joy. "For
three years we lived in a nightmare," said the Mayor of
Masnieres to me this morning, "and now we seem to be in
a dream too good to be true."

One man who has now come to our side of the line is a
youngish man of thirty-eight or so, but with the look of
one of sixty, and with a strange waxen colour like that of

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 59

death. He has a strange history. For all these three years
and more, since the beginning of the war, he has lived in
hiding in a cellar of his own house, where German officers
were billeted. He was fed by his wife out of the extra
ration given to a baby born during the war. The house
was searched once a week, according to rule, and both
husband and wife would have been punished by death if the
man had been discovered, but he was never found, and, by
a queer chance, the morning that the English came to Mas-
nieres was the day on which the house was to be searched
again. The man, who is now free, has wept ever since his
liberation from that dark cellar in the town.

Ill

The Tunnel Trench to Bourlon Wood

November 23
The first great surprise of our attack across the Hinden-
burg lines is over, and the free open fighting, when the cav-
alry, Tanks, and infantry rounded up the enemy in French
villages, has now been followed by closer fighting of the
old style, with attacks and counter-attacks, ground gained
and ground lost on both sides, while the enemy is making a
strong stand with local forces and units hurriedly brought
up in order 'to gain time for the arrival of stronger rein-
forcements. He is massing men and guns in Cambrai, and
preparing to hold a line of defence round that city if he
is forced still further back from his present positions. The
batde has continued to-day, and our troops and Tanks have
been engaged in heavy fighting round Bourlon Wood, and
at Fontaine-Notre-Dame, to the east of it, which we lost
yesterday for a time, after a sharp counter-attack upon our
Seaforth Highlanders, who entered it on Wednesday night
with the Tanks. It is a tragedy for the poor civilians
there that after a brief spell of liberty which they used to

60 THE WAY TO VICTORY

provide the Tank crews with coffee, some of them, if not
all of them, fell again into the hands of the enemy.

To-day we are attacking the village of Mceuvres, just
southwest of Fontaine-Notre-Dame, which was also taken
and lost after the great advance of the Ulstermen on the
morning of the 21st. That attack of the Ulster battalions
on the first two days of the battle was a hard and grim
episode of the general action, and the ground was gained
only by most persistent endeavours and courage. These men
newly down from the battles of Flanders, where they had
had terrible and tragic fighting, were determined to go far
in this new field, and their spirit was high. They had no
Tanks to cut the wire in front of them, as those machines
were concentrated in large numbers on the right wing of
the attack. The Ulstermen had the Hindenburg trenches
before them, wide belts of wire, and on the other side of
the trenches the deep ditch of the Canal du Nord, a most
formidable series of defences. They had to break down
the wire in front of them by bomb explosions and under
heavy machine-gun fire from the trenches and the farther
side of the canal bank, where the Germans were in their con-
crete blockhouses and strong emplacements. At first they
broke a way through all the obstacles, in spite of being hung
up by the wire here and there, and the harassing fire of
snipers, and they cleared the trenches of men who were de-
moralized by the surprise and suddenness of the attack.
Later some of the Ulstermen came up against a high "spoil"
bank, or waste heap, sixty feet high from the canal bank,
and defended from tunnelled dug-outs underneath. It was
at about 8.30 in the morning that they captured the "spoil
heap," and a crowd of prisoners in the dug-outs, and then
tried to get astride the Cambrai road, and to cross the canal.

A gallant little body of Belfast men, all from the ship-
building works on Queen's Island, worked for hours under
fire to build a bridge across and to repair a destroyed cause-
way, so that the infantry could pass. This was done before
dusk, and the Ulstermen seized the way across the Cam-

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 61

brai road, but could not cross the canal or get forward
very far owing to the fierce machine-gun fire that swept
down upon them from the east side of the canal, where the
enemy was holding Mceuvres and Graincourt. It was on
Wednesday morning that the Inniskillings bombed their
way into Mceuvres, and fought their way into the centre
of the village, where a barricade had been put up against
them. In the afternoon the enemy organized a counter-
attack from one of the lochs on the Canal du Nord, but it
did not drive back the Ulstermen; and it was not until
yesterday morning, when our men had almost exhausted
their ammunition and were spent after their long hours of
fighting, that the enemy was able to drive a small wedge into
our line.

By this time most of Mceuvres was in our hands, but the
enemy was able to get up strong bodies of grenadiers and
riflemen, and before darkness came the Ulstermen with-
drew to the southern edge of the village. All this time the
West Riding troops of the 62nd Division had been ad-
vancing and fighting steadily up to- the Cambrai road, and
over a depth of seven thousand yards of ground — a record
advance in one day — up to Graincourt.

Tanks and cavalry co-operated in this attack, and the
Tanks were a most powerful aid, and cruised round and
through the village, where they put out nests of machine-
guns. The cavalry then went on into Anneux ; but the first
patrol had to retire because of the fierce machine-gun fire
that swept down the streets, and it had to be attacked and
taken again the day before yesterday. Below Graincourt
Church the Yorkshiremen of the 62nd Division found some
great catacombs elaborately fitted up as battalion headquar-
ters, and supplied with electric light by the attentions of two
German electricians, who remained for some time in our
employ after their capture. In Anneux we captured two
8-inch howitzers, and in the neighbourhood a battery of
5.9's. The garrison of these two villages belonged mostly
to the 107th Division, lately from Russia, sent up in sup-

62 THE WAY TO VICTORY

port of the 20th Landwehr, who are elderly fellows, and
not great fighters; but the West Riding troops captured
prisoners from six German divisions on their march for-
ward. On the 2 1 st they pushed up to the north-west of
Bourlon Wood, and saw nothing of the enemy, in spite of
the machine-gun fire that poured down the glade. They saw
nothing of him until they were surprised to see faces coming
up from the ground not far away from them. They were
the faces of German soldiers looking over a concrete trench
artfully camouflaged with green canvas along the edge of
the wood. A German aeroplane, one of the rare birds of
this battle from the enemy's side, came over, flew low and
shot at the Yorkshiremen with machine-gun fire ; and, with
the rifle-fire ahead of them, the position was too bad to
hold with their strength at the time, and they withdrew a
little until yesterday, when they attacked again behind a
line of Tanks, routing out a number of machine-guns in
the southern end of the wood.

This wood was held by the 214th German Division, who
suffered heavily. Altogether the West Riding men took
over 1000 prisoners and killed many of the enemy, so that
they put out of action a number far in excess of their own
losses.

I have already told how the Highlanders, south of the
Yorkshiremen, captured the Flesquieres Ridge and fought
very hard for Flesquieres village, which held out all the first
day. On the 21st, after that battle, the "Jocks" pushed on to
the village of Cantaing, where they found about 170 civil-
ians, who received them with wild enthusiasm, so that the
Highlanders, all muddy and wet, were kissed by old peasant
women and young girls and by children held up to them.
These people were weeping and laughing at the same time,
and for a little while seemed beside themselves with joy.
Yesterday they came trapesing down the roads, as I saw
those of Masnieres, with their perambulators and push-
carts, with old grandmothers and little babies, all bedraggled
and mud splashed, soaked to the skin, in heavy rain, but

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 68

happy and with shining eyes because of that great strange
gift of liberty which had come to them again.

While the main attack was happening opposite the de-
fence lines of Cambrai a very remarkable battle was being
fought by Irish battalions of the South and West, belong-
ing to the 1 6th Division, along the Hindenburg line to the
west of Bullecourt, and by English troops along a curved
trench beyond Bullecourt itself. The great tunnel trench of
this sector of the Hindenburg line had been attacked before
in the summer of this year without success, and the enemy
was very strong then in his 2000 yards of tunnel which, as
we knew, was elaborately mined and charged, so that it
could be blown up if ever our men broke into it. For many
weeks past our field-guns had been cutting the wire and dis-
tressing the enemy by putting up smoke barrages and send-
ing over gas clouds. He was kept in constant fear of at-
tack, but never knew when it would happen to him. He
held it in great numbers, and 1000 men massed in the tun-
nel and 1000 yards of support trench which he had begun
to dig behind — an unusual strength for this length of front.

On the morning of the battle, smoke-candles were lit all
along the line, and to the left and right of the Irish other
demonstrations were made. Then the Irish went away, all
very keen and confident, and glad to fight in this country,
and with this chance of surprise, rather than in Flanders,
where they had had such a hard time. Some expert tun-
nelling officers and miners were among the first to go into
the Hindenburg tunnel trench in order to cut the leads and
prevent the blowing up of the mines. It was a great peril
and a frightful anxiety, on which the lives of many men
were at stake. But luck was with the Irish that morning.
A happy discovery made at the most fortunate moment
showed all the workings of the mine. In the support trench
some of the enemy fought hard, and even in the short dis-
tance which the Irish had to go, a few hundred yards at
most, they were caught by machine-gun fire and did not
escape altogether lightly so; but the enemy's losses were'

64 THE WAY TO VICTORY

very heavy. Apart from the prisoners, who numbered
nearly 700, 350 have been counted on the ground, which is
now ours, and in counter-attacks by local bodies of men he
lost many more.

There were nine of these counter-attacks against the
Irish — attacks by platoons and companies, and some of them
were utterly destroyed. The assault by the English troops
on Bovis trench north of Bullecourt by the West Yorks and
the Northumberland Fusiliers of the 3rd Division was also
successful and inflicted severe losses. The enemy in his
bulletins says that on this part of the Front we were unable
to advance beyond the third line of trenches. The Irish were
never meant to go further at the moment than they did ; but
this taking of the tunnel trench was a sensational exploit,
and of good military value to us. To the enemy it is a
heavy blow. The 240th German Division were the troops
who suffered so much from the Irish attack, and they were
strong fellows, although pale after their long life in the
darkness of their tunnel where they were caught like rats.

November 22
After our smash through the Hindenburg lines on Tuesday
morning, and as soon as the German Command could get
any news as to what had happened, reinforcements were
hurried up by omnibuses from camps near Cambrai, but
they were so hard pressed that they actually cleared out a
camp of cripples and convalescents at Beaurevoir, and hurled
them into the fighting-lines. It was a brutal and stupid
assault. The men were too ill to fight, and now are too ill
to stand. This morning one of them, who lay about among
the prisoners, was found to be in the last stages of con-
sumption, and had to be taken by us to an isolation hospital.
Among other troops and oddments of troops hurried up to
stop the gap was at least one battalion of the First Guards
Reserve sent down from Lens.

There is no doubt that the enemy is now rushing up all
available troops to make a stand round Cambrai. To be fair

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 65

to his men — and to ours, because it was not a walk-over for
them after the first surprise — the troops holding the woods
and villages behind the Hindenburg line have fought hard
and well, and have tried to beat our men back and hold
them off by many counter-attacks. They defended them-
selves stubbornly against our 29th Division in Lateau Wood,
as I have already told, and at a place called Les Rues Vertes,
in the neighbourhood of Masnieres. Marcoing was entered
by Worcesters, Newfoundlanders, and others without great
opposition, but there was severe righting beyond that vil-
lage and in Neuf Wood on the left, which was attacked at
the bayonet point and taken after heavy "scrapping," as
our men call it, by the Guernsey Light Infantry, who were
in action for the first time.

A heavy counter-attack developed from the north-east of
Masnieres at about eleven o'clock of the first morning of the
battle. The German infantry advanced in massed forma-
tion, shoulder to shoulder, as in the old days of 1914, and
as I saw them at Falfemont Farm on the Somme, and they
were mown down by our gun-fire. Another attack of the
same kind was attempted after midday from the Marcoing
side, but the men dropped into the trenches on their way
and never came out again. Another attack, repeated yester-
day, was made upon the village of Noyelles after its capture
by English battalions, and one post held by Lancashire
Fusiliers changed hands seven times. The village itself
changed hands three times, and there was fierce street fight-
ing, and the place had to be gained and regained from house
to house and from cellar to cellar, the enemy defending
every wall by machine-gun and rifle-fire, and sniping our
men from the roofs and trees. The enemy was driven
across the canal by men of the 16th Middlesex Regiment
and the 2nd Royal Fusiliers.

There was very lively skirmishing about Crevecceur, and
here a little body of the Northumberland Yeomanry came
up against some German guns in action. They were about
to charge when they saw that there was a belt of uncut wire

66 THE WAY TO VICTORY

between them and the enemy's battery. It was impossible to
lead horses against that, so they dismounted, worked round
the wire, and captured the guns. It was cavalry also, with
the aid of Tanks, which captured the village of Cantaing at
six o'clock last evening, with another bag of prisoners whom
I saw marching down the roads to-day.

I wrote yesterday of German officers who spoke with ad-
miration of our attack, and praised the courage of our men
and the strategy which has led to our victory. They are
not all like that, and some of the younger officers are rilled
with fury, and show it by their words and gestures when
they see such swarms of their own men marching by under
the escort of a few mounted guards, and when they see
our cavalry riding through villages which until two days
ago were behind their lines. After all, it is an incredible
blow to these men behind the Hindenburg line, who believed
themselves impregnable and had no warning of their im-
pending fate. The civilians with whom I talked told me
that the German officers have been much elated lately over
the retreat of the Italians, and boasted of marching to
Paris in the same way. Their men are not so buoyed up.
All they want is to get the war over and done with. "After
each of their successes," said the Mayor of Masnieres, "they
show a brief enthusiasm and then relapse into the despon-
dency which is their usual mood. They believed in the sum-
mer that the war would be over by Christmas. 'We shall
all be home for Christmas,' they said. But they cannot give
any reason for this faith, and the most intelligent are the
most hopeless."

There was heavy fighting to-day round Bourlon Wood,
with steady artillery-fire from our guns, and our cavalry and
Tanks and splendid infantry are rounding up more of the
enemy in his villages and rearguard posts. Meanwhile, the
enemy is bringing up his guns and new men, but whatever
happens now the surprise blow has been struck, thousands
of prisoners have been taken, and the heroic adventure of

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 67

the Tanks has shown that an attack can be made secretly
and suddenly, so that strategy comes back to the Western
Front.

IV
The Battles of Bourlon Wood

November 25
For two days there has been a fierce battle for possession of
Bourlon Wood, the high forest which commands all the
country north of and north-east of the villages of Inchy
and Mceuvres to west of it, and for Fontaine-Notre-Dame
and La Folie Wood to east of it.

In all this fighting London battalions of the 56th Di-
vision on the left, across the first and second trenches of the
great Hindenburg line up by the Louverval-Inchy road,
Yorkshire troops of the 62nd Division, and other English
battalions of the 40th Division, in the centre of the direct
attack on the forest of Bourlon, and Highlanders of the 51st
Division on the right working eastwards of Bourlon Wood
and up to Fontaine-Notre-Dame, which they gained and
lost in fierce attacks and counter-attacks, have shown a most
dauntless determination to make good the triumph of the
first day, when they broke the German line. Some of these
men have been fighting now for nearly a week. They have
had no rest and no sleep, except what they snatched in odd
half-hours lying out in the open beyond all trench-lines or in
the ruins of the villages out of which they have routed the
enemy. They have gone on short rations, as they are out in
the blue far from supply-dumps, and after the first sur-
prise on Tuesday morning, when they caught in their net of
steel a mass of dazed and frightened men, they have had to
force their way forward, or hold the positions they have
gained against great numbers of counter-attacks from Ger-
man troops hurled up to Cambrai from all available sources,
and against small garrisons and bodies of storm troops and

68 THE WAY TO VICTORY

patrols and snipers, whose spirit has been rallied by their
officers, and who have fought with really desperate courage
to stop the gap made in their lines.

The break through of Tuesday morning has been fol-
lowed by a ding-dong struggle along twelve miles or more
of open country from Pronville to the east and south of
Masnieres, but it is a battle unlike anything we have seen
since the early days of the war. It is open fighting again,
away for the most part from trench systems except on the
left, where some Royal Fusiliers (Londoners they were)
were extending their hold on further stretches of the Hin-
denburg line; open fighting in a wide sweep of undulating
country, where there is grass instead of shell-pits and blasted
earth. It was essential for all further progress to gain that
black forest which covers 600 acres of the high ground to
the west of Cambrai. The difficulty of capturing it was in-
creased by the loss of Fontaine-Notre-Dame on the eastern
side, and by the strong defence of fresh German troops
round Mceuvres and Inchy on the west. Our cavalry had
not been able to make a sweeping movement, though they
had fought many gallant little actions about these fortified
villages, and rounded up many prisoners. The enemy had
been quick in rushing up guns. The weakness of his artil-
lery on the first day, due partly to the wonderful counter-
battery work of our splendid gunners, to the capture of over
100 guns on the first two days of the battle, and to the con-
centration of the enemy's artillery in Flanders, is no longer
a factor in our favour. The German High Command has
ordered up every available battery from other positions, and
behind the German lines the roads must have been choked
day and night by guns and limbers on the march to the
country round Cambrai, straining every nerve of horse and
man to get to their new sectors in time to remedy their
disaster. They have come up now, and yesterday I saw
some very deadly barrage-fire below Inchy and Mceuvres
and south of Bourlon Wood as proof of their arrival.

"They have been damn quick into getting on to the

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 69

ground," said some of our own gunners, and they spoke
with a queer kind of admiration, as good sportsmen, of the
rapidity with which the German gunners had registered and
got into action.

So it was not against a weak enemy and no longer with
the first gift of surprise that our men attacked Bourlon

THE HEIGHTS OF BOURLON WOOD

Wood yesterday and the day before, and carried their battle-
line forward below Inchy and Mceuvres and made a new
assault upon the village of Fontaine-Notre-Dame, where the
Highlanders had fought forwards and backwards through
the streets now burning with a fierce red glow, though many
houses still gave cover to machine-gunners and snipers and
German infantry.

On Friday morning the battle opened on all sides of the
forest of Bourlon — south, west, and east. It was an at-
tack in which all arms worked together in the most spec-
tacular and splendid union. Our guns opened a terrific
drumfire, and it was the strongest demonstration so far in
this battle of all those batteries which had been hidden be-
fore, the sudden surprise of all those field-guns which, after
the first advance, had galloped far forward over the cap-
tured ground, and taken up new positions astoundingly close
to the enemy's line of retreat, all those heavy and light
batteries which I had seen streaming up through the day

70 THE WAY TO VICTORY

and night, choking the roads with their long columns,
silhouetted against the pale dawn as they wound over the
hillsides, surging in wild turmoil of horse and mules and
guns and wagons in the ruined villages behind the lines, and
getting into action a few minutes after their journey's end.
Many of the men had fought on other battlefields in this
year of terrible fighting. For months they had had but
little rest and no kind of peace, and had lived in shell-fire
until they were haggard and worn and weary. But now
they came to these new battlefields with as much enthusiasm
as though they were going into action for the first time,
because of the new promise of victory, and they did not
spare an ounce of their strength, and went to almost super-
human exertions to get up their guns and their shells. They
were first to start the Battle of Bourlon Wood.

But the first to advance were the Tanks — more than two
score of them, with single scouts ahead, followed by others
in echelon formation. Many of them had already been
fighting since Tuesday morning; all of them had been
working day and night for many days before that. Stand-
ing on the battlefield yesterday with one of them going to
join his brothers who were round Bourlon Wood I heard
from the young pilot the tale of his adventure in this battle,
and all through his tale ran one refrain. It was his need
of sleep. He spoke the word sleep as though it were some
spell word holding all the beauty of life. For nine days
and nights before the surprise at dawn he had been working
to get his engine right, to get his guns right, to fix things up,
as he said, speaking with a grim, worn look at the box of
tricks by his side. Half an hour before he went over he
was seen by the enemy in Havrincourt Chateau away on the
hill in front of him by the white glare of their Verylights.
He had tried to stop every time a light went up, but they
saw his movement, and instantly a field-gun opened on him.
Its shooting was marvellous, and I saw how near the shells
had fallen to the track of that Tank, only a yard or two
away. The young pilot was sitting outside his Tank with

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 71

his sergeant, but presently he said, "I guess we'll get inside.
This is getting too hot.,, And inside, as they advanced to
battle, the pilot and the sergeant and one other man were
the only ones awake. All the rest were fast asleep, dead and
drugged by sleep after their long ordeal. That seems to me
the queerest thing I have heard in this battle, that and the
experience of one Tank which was hit twice by direct hits.
The first shell burst inside the Tank after passing between
the arm and the body of the pilot, and by an amazing chance
did not wound a man. Another shell came inside, and again
no one was hit. Later the officer and the crew got out to
deal with their Tank, which had become stuck between two
banks up by Havrincourt village, when the enemy was still
fighting there. Machine-gun bullets whipped round them
like a swarm of wasps, but only one man was hit and only
slightly touched. "It was a million to one chance each
time," said the pilot, "three sets of miracles which you can't
count on again."

When the Tanks advanced on Bourlon Wood they were
driven and fought by men who had been shaken and bruised
and banged inside those narrow forts, who had been
drenched by sweat in great heat, who needed sleep with
a drunken craving, who were in continuous peril of death,
but who goaded themselves with a spiritual spur in order to
do their job well and add to the honour of the Tanks.
So they moved steadily towards the enemy and his guns, in*
side their queer, beast-like things, which look very sinister
as they go forward in the grey light of dawn, as I have seen
them. Little bodies of cavalry were riding on their flanks of
attack, and the infantry came behind in open order — those
Highlanders of the 51st and Yorkshiremen of the 62nd
Divisions and other English and Welsh battalions who had
been fighting in this open battle since Monday night. Tanks
and infantry gained and held the sunken road south-west
of Bourlon Wood, and a number of Tanks were seen ad-
vancing steadily in a north-west direction from the village
of Graincourt. Another Tank was going well 500 yards

72 THE WAY TO VICTORY

south of Fontaine-Notre-Dame, and by Anneux there was
still another group, in echelon formation, advancing north-
wards to get on the east side of the forest and drive a wedge
between that and Fontaine-Notre-Dame. The enemy's guns
answered the rockets which went up from the German
troops, each light like a high wail for help, and laid down
a heavy barrage of high explosives and shrapnel south of
the forest and all along the line of our attack.

November 26
After heavy counter-attacks, following the fighting round
Bourlon Wood, which I described in my last message, the
enemy succeeded in entering Bourlon village again yester-
day morning, and seems to have held his ground there up
to the present hour. This morning the battle was renewed,
and our troops of the 40th Division — Royal Welsh Fusi-
liers, the Welsh Regiment, South Wales Borderers, Lanca-
shire, Surrey, and Suffolk men, with Highland Light In-
fantry and Argyll and Sutherlands — are heavily engaged
not only on the outskirts of Bourlon village, but also in the
neighbourhood of Fontaine-Notre-Dame, east of the for-
est, which, as I have previously told, is partially destroyed
by fire, after having changed hands more than once.

The enemy has brought up strong reinforcements, and is
now well provided with artillery, which has been sent up
with great rapidity from other sections of his front, and
when I was in the neighbourhood of Havrincourt this morn-
ing there was a violent bombardment in progress on both
sides. There is no doubt in my mind that the German
command will make powerful attempts to regain Bourlon
Wood and the country about it in order to relieve the com-
mand we now have over his Cambrai line, which is one of
his main lines of supply, so that if we make the railway
untenable he is very seriously menaced in his communica-
tions. One effect of the battle is already evident further
north, where his troops have been compelled to abandon
small parts of their trench system on both sides of Bulle-

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 73

court after the capture of the Hindenburg tunnel trench by
the Irish brigades and trenches behind Bullecourt by the
West Yorks and Northumberland Fusiliers of the 3rd Di-
vision.

The capture of Bourlon Wood and the resistance by our
troops against formidable counter-attacks all through Fri-
day and Saturday was aided by the fine gallantry of the
cavalry — some of our Hussars — who fought dismounted in
co-operation with infantry and Tanks. It was due to them
that the north-east corner of the wood was held when seri-
ously menaced by repeated attack, and if this had been lost
the whole of the wood might have been in jeopardy. After
the break through on the first morning of the battle the
cavalry have had a hard time without much luck. Their
own hopes of a big drive were spoilt by several unfortunate
incidents. One of these incidents was the defence of Fles-
quieres village by a garrison of Germans who put up a
long struggle before yielding to our pressure, and so held
a wedge in our line which made it dangerous for cavalry to
sweep round on either side. Another unlucky thing was
the breaking of the bridge over the canal at Masnieres by
the weight of a Tank, which was first to cross. One squad-
ron of Canadian cavalry — the Fort Garry Horse — succeeded
in repairing the broken bridge over the canal by the aid of
the civilians from Masnieres, who came out to meet them,
and at about half -past three crossed under machine-gun and
rifle-fire from the banks with only half a dozen casual-
ties. They only numbered 123 men, and orders had been
sent after them to retire, as it was so late in the day, but
their colonel lamed his horse in a sunken road, and the order
did not reach the squadron commander in time. So they
rode on, and had some remarkable adventures. They
moved north, and made their way through the gap in the
wire cut by the troopers, where they were again under rifle-
fire and machine-gun fire which wounded the captain and
two men. The command was carried on by a young lieu-
tenant, who rode with his men until they reached a camou-

74 THE WAY TO VICTORY

flaged road south-east of the village of Rumilly, where they
went through in sections under the fire of the enemy hidden
on the banks. Here they came up against a battery of field-
guns, one of which fired point-blank at them. They charged
the battery, putting the guns out of action and killing some
of the gunners. Those who were not destroyed surrendered,
and the prisoners were left to be sent back by the supports.

The squadron then dealt with the German infantry in the
neighbourhood, some of whom fled, while some were killed
or surrendered. All this operation was done at a gallop,
under fire from flanking blockhouses. The squadron then
slowed down to walk, and took up a position in a sunken
road one kilometre east of Rumilly. Darkness crept down
upon them, and gradually they were surrounded by German
infantry with machine-guns, so that they were in great dan-
ger of capture or destruction. Only five of their horses re-
mained unhit, and the lieutenant in command decided that
they must endeavour to cut their way through and get back.
The horses were stampeded in the direction of the enemy in
order to draw the machine-gun fire, and while these rider-
less horses galloped wildly out of one end of Sunken Road
the officer and his surviving troopers escaped from the
other end. On the way back they encountered four bodies
of the enemy, whom they attacked and routed.

On one occasion their escape was due to the cunning of
another young lieutenant who spoke German and held con-
versation with the enemy in the darkness, deceiving them
as to the identity of his force until they were able to take
the German troops by surprise and hack a way through.
This lieutenant was hit through the face by a bullet, and
when he arrived back in Masnieres with his men in advance
of the rear-guard he was only able to make his report before
falling in a state of collapse.

It was another small body of cavalry — the 7th Dragoon
Guards — that took the village of Noyelles. After skirting
round it under rifle- and machine-gun fire they put their
horses to the gallop and rode straight through the main

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 75

street at three o'clock in the afternoon. In the village they
captured twenty-five prisoners, ten of whom were hiding in
cellars, and handed them to the infantry who followed.
Afterwards they went on through a little copse south of La
Folie Wood, where they killed some of the enemy and scat-
tered some machine-gunners. Further along they met seven
German officers walking about in the wood as though there
was no war on, and took them prisoners, though they had
to release some of them later as they could not be bothered
with them. Later they came across six ammunition-wagons
in La Folie Wood, and destroyed them. In the heart of
the wood was a German divisional headquarters, and one of
our cavalry officers approached the cottage stealthily and
fired his revolver through the window. The troops then
made their way back, and after riding through another party
of German soldiers came into Noyelles again. On the fol-
lowing day another squadron of the 4th Dragoon Guards
took the village of Cantaing at the gallop, one party direct
and two others riding round on each flank. They captured
fifty prisoners in the streets, and patrols went up to
Fontaine-Notre-Dame, but could not get in as it was then
heavily defended. Other squadrons, including the 15th
Hussars, were riding out in the open country, coming up
against machine-gun fire and rifle-fire, capturing small
bodies of prisoners and rendering great aid to the infantry
before they were used as a dismounted force in the attack
on Bourlon Wood and in the resistance of counter-attacks.

November 25
It was early in the morning that I went out again over the
newly captured ground to see this battle. Every yard of it
across the Hindenburg lines — those deep, wide trenches now
empty of all life — was strewn with evidences of the ene-
my's panic-stricken flight and capture in the beginning of
the battle.

The way up to Havrincourt village, on the ridge to the
west of Flesquieres — first in the dip by an old stone cross

76 THE WAY TO VICTORY

five centuries old, dedicated to St. Hubert, patron saint of
huntsmen before our Tanks went a-hunting on a fine No-
vember morning, and then up the slope where the York-
shires had to fight their way to the strong high wall of red
brick surrounding the chateau grounds — was littered with
things the enemy had left behind him — his field-grey over-
coats, his shrapnel helmets, innumerable pairs of boots, his
goatskin pouches, his rifles, bayonets, bandoliers, tunics,
and gas-masks. It was as though large numbers of men
had thrown everything away from them in moments of
cold terror and had fled naked from their fear. In their
dug-outs were all the little comforts of life which men
gather to make life endurable in such dark holes, with
wooden chairs and tables from French houses, and mirrors
and water-jugs and other furniture. Those who had been
the masters of these houses had gone away, and others had
entered into possession — our own men, the "moppers up,"
who now, while the battle was flaming over the countryside
not many thousands of yards away, were settling down
and searching for souvenirs in these new quarters.

I followed the track of the Tanks, and went through
wide gaps they had made in the barbed wire — acres of
barbed wire — and went along the route of the Scottish
when they surged after the Tanks on that great morning
of surprise. Some of them had left their kilts behind,
caught on barbed wire, and with no time to mind rents in
the tartan of the Seaforths, they had gone on in their steel
hats and very little else. And all this way to the battle
was littered with letters in German and English, as though
there had been a paper-chase instead of the hunting of men.
They were the intimate letters which men wear close to their
hearts until war snatches them away and tosses them to
the breeze. "Mein lieber bruder," I read, as I picked up
one of them, and "My darling hubby," began a letter to a
London boy, who was now away by Bourlon Wood.

I went out into open country, and outstretched before me
was the whole panorama of this battle. I went up to the

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 77

edge of it, as close as one could go without getting into
the furnace fires, and all around me was the swirl and tur-
moil of the battlefield. Everywhere Tanks were crawling
over the ground, some of them moving forward into action,
some of them out of action, mortally wounded, some of
them like battle-cruisers of the land, going forward in
reconnaissance. Across the field guns were moving up,
and drivers of gun-limbers were urging their horses for-
ward over the muddy slopes with new supplies of ammuni-
tion for the forward batteries. Small bodies of cavalry
rode about and put their horses to the gallop when black
shrapnel burst overhead with a high snarling menace.
Gunner officers and observers were out in the open watch-
ing the enemy's fire, and their own signallers were flag-
wagging as though in Battersea Park on a Saturday morn-
ing in the old days of peace, though the hostile shell-fire
was creeping near them and odd shells were scattered over
the countryside searching for the likes of them, as they
would say. It was a fantastic and unimaginable scene,
and the battlefield conversation would be unbelievable if I
were to put down all the remarks I heard from officers and
men about me on the edge of the battle and within the zone
of fire.

Less than 2000 yards away from us was a town on fire.
It was Graincourt, and the enemy was "knocking hell out
of it" in revenge for its capture. It had been my inten-
tion to go there, but I stopped short of it, and was glad I
had gone no farther. Shell after shell burst among its
roofs and walls without ceasing for several hours. Red
brick cottages went up in clouds of rosy smoke with a flame
in the heart of it. The enemy's shells burst in Graincourt
with many colours — green and purple and orange and rose
pink — so that it was a wonderful poem in colour, but as
tragic as the death that was there. On the slope of the
ground above this village, not so far away that at any mo-
ment the slope itself might not be swept with high ex-
plosives, three English soldiers watched the battle while

78 THE WAY TO VICTORY

they sat at their ease on a garden-seat taken from a neigh-
bouring park. Nearby, two officers, sitting on an upturned
tub and a petrol tin, were munching sandwiches and watch-
ing the progress of our attack on Bourlon Wood, which
stood up in front of us black and big, with the sun on its
southern edge, while our men were fighting inside with the
Tanks, and where the enemy was flinging down a heavy
barrage.

Officers came galloping up and leaned down over their
saddles and asked, "Have you got any news how things are
going; how about Bourlon village and Mceuvres and
Inchy?"

"I don't like those five point nines," said a little Tank offi-
cer who was standing by the side of his monster. He
pointed to a road upon which large numbers of shells were
bursting, and said, "That's where I have got to go ; I think
I'll have lunch first." He began to munch some bread and
cheese, and with only half an eye on the battle told me how
he had got a bottle of whisky out of a Divisional Head-
quarters in return for a ride in his Tank to an excellent
major, and how jolly glad he was of the prize, because "you
couldn't get a drink for love or money on this side of the
battlefields."

"Do you know where my battalion is?" asked a lonely
Guards' officer, coming up. He had just come back from
leave, and was hunting for his men somewhere on the
south side of Bourlon Wood. Overhead come the flying
men, perilously low, as usual. They went fluttering over
the German lines, and we were glad when they flew a lit-
tle further off as the enemy flung back shrapnel at them
which might hit us if it didn't hit them. A column of cav-
alry came down a sunken road and then out on to the sky-
line above one of the Tanks. "They will be drawing fire
on me next," said the Tank pilot, and with that desire of
life which is strong in man, everybody hoped he was in a
safer place than the other fellow. At 2.30, or a little later,
the enemy began to fire intensely along the whole line of our

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 79

front below Moeuvres and Inchy. "Another counter-at-
tack, curse them," said an officer; "that is about the sev-
enth to-day." The German gunners were putting down
their barrage line dead straight for miles, and revealed an
abominable new strength in artillery. The barrage lines
swept forward, with white smoke clouds rising after the
flash of bursting shells from field-guns and big, black, sin-
ister clouds with a vomit of earth in them where the Ger-
man heavies were crashing, but it was not a counter-at-
tack. It was a barrage laid down to kill our own attack on
the two villages to the west of Bourlon Wood which was
very quiet and still because no gunners were shooting into
it while men were fighting at close quarters within those
glades. Light signals went up from the enemy's lines.
Our infantry was advancing again. Though I could not
see, I am sure the moment of the new attack came when
our batteries, which had not been shooting very hard for
some time, and with only irregular rounds from isolated
guns, suddenly burst out into a wild roar of drum-fire. All
our field-batteries were revealed by their flashes for miles
along the Front, and there were many of them, and they
were very close to the enemy. I stood in the centre of their
arc, with the heavier guns behind me, and the air seemed
to rock and sway with the rhythm of their fire. Below the
slopes the grass was alive with little rushlights, and as
afternoon became darkened, and dusk crept over the battle-
fields, and the shadows lengthened and deepened round
Bourlon Wood, these gun-flashes became more vivid.

There were five heavy counter-attacks on our line yes-
terday afternoon, and by four o'clock the enemy was still
in Bourlon village, and with a last strong and desperate
effort succeeded in driving us partly back in the forest
again off the high ground at the northern end. It was the
only success he had had in the day, though he had held our
London men of the 56th Division back from ground round
Inchy and half-way through Mceuvres village, to which he
had been driven.

80 THE WAY TO VICTORY

He could not hold the high ground in Bourlon Wood.
As the sun was setting on this day of battle, with a glori-
ous bar of shining gold below the clouds, a final attack was
made by our men, infantry and cavalry working together,
and the enemy was again routed from the greater part of
the wood, and our troops entered the village of Bourlon
itself, fought through streets hotly defended by rifle and
machine-gun fire and mopped up most of the main de-
fences, although odd groups of men are still fighting there.

When I went away yesterday evening there was still
heavy gun-fire and, above, a great glory in the sky where
wild mountainous clouds were all on fire in the sunset, and
over Graincourt, still in a fury of shell-fire, a quiet stretch
of the heavens which had been all blue until suddenly it was
filled with little flame feathers as wisps of cloud were
caught by the splendour of the day's last light. After that
it was very dark, and as I went back through the woods
the only light was where the white rays of the moon fil-
tered through the branches and all the tree-trunks were
black and sharp against the glare of bursting shells, with
darkness in between them. Behind the lines camp-fires
were being lighted in the hiding-places of the Tanks.

On the left our troops advanced towards Inchy at about
half -past eight in the morning, and for a time were held
up by the fierce machine-gun fire which swept down on their
left from the east side of the Inchy road, although on the
right they made good their advance without serious trouble.

A little patrol of Londoners crept out ahead of the main
body and worked their way into a sap on the west side on
the way to Pronville to feel the enemy's strength. They
were fired at hotly by rifle volleys, and came back with their
report. While this was happening our airmen, who were
all over the battleground, flying very low and behaving
with amazing and light-hearted audacity, reported that two
battalions of the enemy's troops were advancing south-
wards on Mceuvres for a counter-attack. Our guns di-
rected their fire on these columns, and so shattered them

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 81

that they do not seem to have come further, although it is
probable that their survivors joined later attacks. Later in
the morning the Germans were seen retiring south-east of
Fontaine-Notre-Dame by La Folie Wood, and also by other
observers were seen moving back on to Pronville, on the
extreme left of our attack. They had abandoned five field-
guns with plenty of their own ammunition.

After midday our troops were moving on Quarry Wood,
west of the forest of Bourlon, and the Yorkshires of the
62nd Division had captured the southern side of the for-
est. Four Tanks went ahead of the infantry and entered
the forest, crashing down its under-growth and small trees,
and sweeping German machine-gun emplacements with
Tank guns. With the North-country troops following
them they took the crucifix in the wood, and went across a
sunken road in which the enemy had been in strength.
Here the enemy fought with great valour, and small par-
ties of Germans put up a most desperate resistance.

Meanwhile the Scottish on the west side of the forest
were going ahead above the old quarry in the outer glades,
with the village of Fontaine on their right and many ma-
chine-guns there firing at them. Tanks forced their way
into the village in spite of fires, and cleared out some of the
enemy's snipers, who used their rifles from windows and
loopholes in the walls.

Early in the afternoon news came back that our line ran
half-way through Bourlon Wood down to the centre of La
Folie Wood on the right, going across the Cambrai road
south of Fontaine. In the wood itself there was close
fighting all day long, and gun-fire ceased in this deep belt
of trees because the infantry on both sides were within a
few yards of each other, fighting with rifles and machine-
guns from glade to glade and across barricades of tree-
trunks, while Tanks climbed over fallen logs, crashed
through undergrowth and trampled down stockades and
emplacements. Before dusk the enemy made a desperate
attempt to beat us back by violent counter-attacks from La

82 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Folie Wood and over the ridge north-east of Fontaine-
Notre-Dame. These were beaten off, and more Tanks
moved up to make a final attack on the forest. The enemy
had been driven back to the north-east corner, which was
his last stand among the trees, although he was still defend-
ing the village of Bourlon on the edge of the wood, which
we did not gain until last night, and where in the village
there are still snipers and small groups of Germans in cel-
lars and houses.

Tanks advancing to the north-east corner of the wood
were held up by strong bodies of riflemen and grenadiers,
who swarmed round them and tried to put them out of ac-
tion. It was then that one of our flying-men went up and
did a most astounding feat, though it was not more won-
derful than many other exploits performed by our aviators,
whom I saw flying so low that they seemed as though they
would trim one's hair with their planes. He saw those
German troops swarming round the Tanks and pounced on
them, flying like a bat about them and strafing them with
his Lewis gun. They fled from the roar of his engine and
the beating of his wings and the bullets which came about
them like raindrops, and many who could not escape lay
dead and wounded in the undergrowth. The Tanks went
on and gained nearly all the wood with the help of the in-
fantry.

So on Friday night the situation seemed all in our fa-
vour. We had gained almost the entire forest of Bourlon,
but the enemy still held the village on its north-west edge,
and had maintained his line precariously outside Inchy and
Mceuvres. All through the night there was heavy gun-
fire from the enemy batteries, and yesterday the battle was
resumed with further attacks on Bourlon and repeated
counter-attacks from the enemy throughout the morning
and afternoon. By yesterday evening we had cleared the
last Germans out of the forest, taken the village of Bourlon,
forced the enemy half-way out of Mceuvres and repulsed
all his counter-attacks with most bloody losses. It was a

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 83

day of great drama, and many hours of it were filled with
strange and terrible interest because seldom, if ever before,
have we seen so thrilling a picture of open warfare or such
seething movement of men in fields of war.

November 27
There is still hard, nagging fighting in and about Bour-
lon Wood and village, westwards by Mceuvres, and east-
wards around the half-burnt village of Fontaine-Notre-

Dame.

The enemy continues to bring up reinforcements, and is
massing them near Cambrai, although he can no longer de-
train them there, as the station is under the fire of our guns,
and the old town itself has been evacuated by civilians and
all but fighting troops, and cleared of all material as hur-
riedly as possible. Some very sharp orders must have ar-
rived from the German High Command to the Divisional
Generals and regimental commanders holding the Cambrai
area, for our capture of Bourlon forest menaces one of
their most important lines of communications, apart from
its threat to Cambrai, and desperate efforts are being made
by the Third Guards' Division, and other new troops in
this line, to wrest back the high ground on which that dark
wood stands, famous through centuries of warfare as a
strategical point. Last night at about ten o'clock another
counter-attack was delivered against our lines in the for-
est, but it does not seem to have broken through our for-
ward defences. From our side raids were made into the
village of Bourlon on the north-west side of the wood,
part of the object being to rescue some companies of East
Surreys of the 40th Division who had been cut off by pre-
vious counter-attacks, and were holding out among ruined
houses, surrounded by the enemy and without food or sup-
plies. In the darkness of a bitter night, with cruel wind
blowing and rain turning to sleet and snow, our men of
the 62nd Division worked forward into Bourlon village
and fought behind the cover of broken walls and through

84 THE WAY TO VICTORY

bombarded houses, under bursts of machine-gun and rifle
fire. I do not know yet any further details of this fight-
ing, except that some of the East Surreys were rescued
and brought back.

It is believed that other men of ours belonging to the
Highland Light Infantry of the 40th Division remain in
the village, holding out to the last gasp until they may be
relieved in the same way by comrades who will fight hard
to get them. Early this morning, on the right of the for-
est of Bourlon, where Fontaine-Notre-Dame is smoulder-
ing out into white ash and black ruin, except where some
of its houses have been untouched by fire, one of our Bri-
gades of Guards, including the Irish, Grenadier, Cold-
stream, and Scots Guards, moved forward to harry the
German garrison, who had come back in strength, with
many machine-guns, after our withdrawal last Wednes-
day. Our men have it seems, forced their way into a part
of the village, in spite of the dreadful sweep of machine-
gun fire from neighbouring houses and from La Folie
Wood to the south-east.

After a spell of mild weather, which favoured us, in
spite of rainy nights, at the beginning of this battle near
Cambrai, it turned bitterly cold yesterday, and our men and
horses had to suffer exposure in the savage and cutting
wind on that wide stretch of open country, where there is
no shelter for man or beast. Yesterday it was a real physi-
cal agony to endure that wind, which came over the bleak
plains like the lash of a whip, and our gunners and mule
drivers, who had been sitting in their saddles for hours,
had a frozen, look as they kept their steel helmets slanted
to the gale, while their poor wet beasts trudged forward
with their heads bent. The whole of our Army has moved
beyond even the far view of ordinary comfort and stand-
ing habitations. They have behind them first the whole
stretch of the Somme battlefields, where is no wood except
a dead wood of naked trunks like gallows-trees, and no
village except a rubbish-heap and a graveyard and a sign-

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 85

board, which says "Pozieres" or "Combles" or "Guille-
mont," and where every road-track is bordered by little
white crosses where sleep the heroes of the Somme in this
wild waste of desolation, haunted by hidden horrors. Then
they have behind them the country of the German retreat,
when in the spring of this year the enemy stole away from
Bapaume and Peronne, and from scores of villages beyond,
after putting an explosive charge into every house and
church and barn and pigsty and stable and chateau and fac-
tory and mill and dog-kennel and summer-house, so that
nothing was left but brickdust and ashes and broken tim-
bers and twisted iron and gateways which lead into man-
sions no longer there, and doorways which open into houses
all tumbled down, and roofs which have fallen, sometimes
with all their tiles in place, to the level of the earth, and
here and there a crucifix at the crossways where the devil
has made a merry hell. And now our fighting troops are
beyond the Hindenburg line and the villages of Ribecourt
and Marcoing and Graincourt and Flesquieres and others,
which are in ruin like all those ruins behind — twelve and
fifteen miles behind. So there are no estaminets behind
the lines of this fighting front into which our men can go
for an hours' "fug," for a sing-song for an hour or two on
their way to the Front, and no whole billets in which they
can rest when they are relieved in the lines ; and they seem
like men in the middle of a great desert, enormously far
from the civilized world, enormously lonely. They are
lonely except for their own comradeship and their own
playfulness and the help of padres and other friendly souls
of the Church Army and the Y.M.C.A., who put up tents
and huts in this wilderness and arrange a little entertain-
ment of body and soul for men who otherwise would be
parched for such things. So on a wall ploughed through
with a monstrous shell-hole one sees "This way to the
cinema," and on a board highly decorated in colours in the
middle of a village which has fallen like a pack of cards
one sees the friendly invitation, "Come to-night. The Bow

86 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Bells variety entertainment now on. The greatest show
in the battlefields," or words to that effect. This is the
background of our battle in Bourlon Wood, and unless
you can see that in the mind's eye you cannot picture the
life of those men of ours who are fighting out there where
Fontaine-Notre-Dame is smouldering in a girdle of ma-
chine-gun fire, and where the forest of Bourlon stands high
and black on the ridge above Cambrai, and where the ene-
my's barrage draws a line of high explosive below Mceuvres
and Inchy to the top of La Folie Wood.

November 28
This morning it was strangely quiet on the battle-front
round Bourlon Wood. Hardly a gun of ours was firing
when I went up by Havrincourt, and the enemy's artillery
was almost silent. No noise of battle came through the
heavy mist lying low over that black forest on the hill, and
shrouding the little ruined town of Fontaine-Notre-Dame
on its right flank. It was a sullen kind of peace after a day
of most fierce fighting, as though both sides were taking
a breathing space.

If one could look into Fontaine-Notre-Dame close
enough to see the wreckage that lies there after the battle
it would be a tragic sight. But I think no man may look
into it now and live after his view, neither an English sol-
dier nor a German soldier, because the little narrow streets
which go between its burnt and broken houses are swept by
machine-gun bullets from our machine-guns in the south
and from the enemy's in the north, and no human being
could stay alive there for a second after showing himself
in the village. Once there was a fountain of pure water
there, dedicated to Our Lady of Compassion, and French
peasant women came there to touch the foreheads of their
children with a few drops of it from their finger-tips, be-
lieving in its healing virtues. Yesterday no Lady of Com-
passion was there to help our poor suffering men. There
was no compassion of any kind. Men fought in the streets

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 87

and in the broken houses and behind the walls and round
about the ruins of the little church of Notre-Dame. To-
day there are only dead bodies among the ruins and the
patter of machine-gun bullets.

I have already given an outline of this battle yesterday,
and there is not much to add to its essential facts, though
there are some more details. Our men fought with great
heroism, and the Germans of the 46th Regiment, with the
9th Grenadiers of the Third German Guards on their right,
fought also with a most stubborn courage, defending them-
selves and coming back in counter-attacks fiercely and hard.
They were some of our own battalions of Guards who at-
tacked Fontaine-Notre-Dame, and on the left were York-
shire battalions of the 62nd Division who advanced upon
Bourlon village at the north-western end of Bourlon Wood.

Before the attack our line ran all round Bourlon Wood,
dropping on the left towards Tadpole Copse, and on the
right to the south of Fontaine, and away down below La
Folie Wood. A successful advance would have swung up
the whole line to include Bourlon village, and then struck
south-east above the village of Fontaine. A glance at the
map will show that the attack on Fontaine would be made
from the south, and from Bourlon Wood on the west, and
that was the disposition of our troops when they advanced.
Before the battle our artillery laid down a heavy barrage
of high explosives and shrapnel in advance of the infantry,
and concentrated a violent fire on the enemy's rear positions
and strong points, and it was behind these lines of shell-fire
that our troops went forward. They were assisted by a
number of Tanks, both in the attack on Fontaine-Notre-
Dame and on the left on Bourlon village.

Let me deal with the left first, as I have heard the facts
this morning from Yorkshiremen of the 62nd Division who
have just come back from it.

The Tanks went before them, slowly but very steadily
and successfully over broken ground, breaking down tree-
stumps and undergrowth, and firing rapidly with their guns,

88 THE WAY TO VICTORY

so that as they got forward groups of Germans were routed
out from their hiding-places and surrendered if they were
not killed by the sweep of fire. The line of the Tanks and
of the following infantry was in an easterly curve on the
western side of Bourlon village, striking at the heart of it.
On the extreme left, invisible at any distance, were six Ger-
man machine-guns, and they raked our troops with a most
harassing enfilade fire, so that they could not make much
headway. Their right battalions were screened from this,
and were able to work up on the eastern edge of the vil-
lage as far as the railway to the north of it, fighting all the
way against groups of German Guards with machine-guns
and rifles, so that there were many hand-to-hand encoun-
ters and a most bitter struggle. It was then, as I wrote
yesterday, that they rescued the officers and men of the
East Surreys, who had been isolated in the village and had
been holding out with great gallantry until help reached
them.

Many prisoners of the German Grenadiers were taken,
and I saw a large batch of them to-day as they came march-
ing down under escort and stood staring through the barbed
wire of their enclosure. They were a powerful body of
men, and put up a big hard fight. So the situation remains
to-day, as far as I know, in the neighbourhood of Bourlon
village.

The attack on Fontaine-Notre-Dame attained its object
in the first stage of the attack, but not without great diffi-
culty, putting the Guards to a high test of discipline and
courage, in which they lived nobly up to their great tradi-
tions.

In spite of our heavy gun-fire the German machine-guns
had not been destroyed, and that weapon showed once more
the powerful influence it has in defending a position of
this kind. During the past two or three days the enemy
has sneaked a large number of machine-guns into the vil-
lage, hiding them in the ruins and holes, and he had batches
of picked snipers behind the walls, and on the broken roofs,

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 89

and between the timbers of the half-burnt houses. From
La Folie Wood, on the right flank of the Guards, came
blasts of this fire, and from Fontaine-Notre-Dame swept
a stream of bullets. There was bloody hand-to-hand fight-
ing with bayonet and rifle and club, but 500 of the enemy
were taken prisoner, and came down safely behind our lines,
as I saw them this morning, pale and haggard after this
battle, but still strong and grim-looking men. Among them
was a regimental commanding officer, a man equal in rank
to one of our brigadiers, who is now very sick at heart be-
cause he had only looked into Fontaine to establish com-
munications and give orders for defence when he was
caught by our attack. He slept this morning under a lit-
tle tarpaulin shelter, with two of his own men waiting out-
side as orderlies, and in another enclosure near to him 300
or more of his regiment, who had become prisoners of the
Guards, and were luckier than their comrades who lie dead
in the streets of Fontaine-Notre-Dame.

It was a hard position to attack in such conditions, but
the Guards were never stopped, and they went forward
across the open ground, keeping marvellous order, and go-
ing forward with splendid discipline behind a squadron of
Tanks. The German machine-gunners held their fire until
the Irish Guards had made 300 yards, and then opened on
them. But these tall Irish lads took the village at a rush,
and got in among the enemy. At the same time Cold-
streamers swept on either side of the sand-pit opposite
them ; the Grenadiers made their way into the edge of the
village, and the Scots worked round on the right. To-
gether they fought their way into the streets, and house by
house, wall by wall, ruin by ruin, routed out the German
garrison and killed their machine-gun menace, and took
possession of Fontaine-Notre-Dame.

So far all was well in our attack, and the Guards had won
a brilliant little victory after severe fighting. Later in the
morning the enemy brought up powerful reserves, and de-
livered a very strong counter-attack, preceded by intense

90 THE WAY TO VICTORY

fire. The Guards could not remain in the village as a
target for all this fire, and had not had time to organize
their defences strongly enough to hold the place without
heavy losses. It was, therefore, decided to withdraw their
line a little, and they fell back to the edge of the village,
keeping the streets of Fontaine under the fire of their
machine-guns, so that no living German may show himself
there. For the moment, therefore, Fontaine-Notre-Dame
seems to be a No Man's Land and one of those sinister spots
where there is no life, but only the signs of death.

November 29
After the heavy fighting round Bourlon Wood, the battle-
front to-day was astoundingly quiet. During the night the
enemy shelled our positions in and about the forest and
some of our recently captured villages, like Graincourt and
Anneux, but this morning, when I went up beyond our old
line at Hermies into the open country on the left of the
Canal du Nord and the Grand Ravin the guns were quiet
on both sides, and only a few shells passed on either side
until, later in the morning, the enemy put a barrage down
for a time south of Bourlon Wood. All this is so different
from the Flanders Front, where one cannot go a step be-
yond Ypres or even so far without hearing the abominable
noise of 5.9's or seeing a shell burst uncomfortably near,
that there is a very curious sense of fantasy in walking
about the battlefields within full view of the enemy's posi-
tions and without any sinister emotion. There is tussocky
grass beneath one's feet, and only a few shell-holes here and
there to remind one that the war is close. The German
trenches which are now behind our own front, are as neat
as when they were first dug and organized, and not flung
into wild shapelessness by storms of shell-fire like those
of the Somme and Flanders. Villages like Ribecourt and
Masnieres still have roofs above their walls, and the woods
of Bourlon and Havrincourt Park and La Folie have not
been slashed to death by high explosives, but in this winter

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 91

of war have all their branches interlaced like Gothic tracery,
so that they are beautiful in sunlight or storm.

The sunlight was upon the forest of Bourlon to-day, and
above that great dark mass of trees rising over the un-
dulating ground to the highest knoll, for which the enemy
has fought in a series of most desperate counter-attacks,
was a long, low line of blue sky wonderfully clear for an
autumn day, so that one had far visibility, and on the right
the towers and spires of Cambrai rose clear and fine below
the clouds. It was difficult to believe that the village of
Bourlon was still in the enemy's hands after the desperate
fighting in and out. The trees of the forest straggle out to
it, and before these battles it was enclosed and hidden in the
glades. But here — and it is only here — the concentration
of our shell-fire has crashed into that little woodland and
lopped off the branches and torn some of the trunks to tat-
ters, so that they begin to have the gallows-tree look of other
woods of war. A few low, dark masses among the trunks
show where the cottages of Bourlon village stood, and
where two days ago Yorkshiremen, following some Tanks,
went into a most bloody fight, and struggled to gain and
hold these ruins against the nests of machine-gunners and
swarms of riflemen. This morning it was all quiet there,
and there was no sign of strife about it. All the activity
of war seemed to be in the sky rather than on the earth, and
owing to the wonderful visibility of the morning hours
many of our aeroplanes were up, flying about the sky in
fighting formations, crossing the German lines on recon-
naissance, and engaging hostile planes who were trying to
use the light of day to see any movement of troops behind
our lines.

Caught napping on the first day of the battle, the Ger-
man air service has tried on the later days to get back some
kind of power on this front, and this morning some of their
best flyers were about, having no doubt been drafted down
from other parts of the Front. I feel sure that it will have
been a great day of battle in the air when the records come

92 THE WAY TO VICTORY

in, for there was continual machine-gun fire overhead and
unseen combats in the clouds. The most sensational thing
I saw was the exploit of a German airman, a cool and
audacious fellow, who slipped through our fighting forma-
tions when they had gone into other sky spaces, and made
straight as an arrow for one of our kite balloons or "sau-
sages." I had passed that Rupert of ours and its home
behind our lines, and had watched it swaying in the wind
in the blue stretch of sky overlooking the enemy's line.
Then I had gone beyond it and was looking at the towers
of Cambrai, when I saw a single aeroplane drop out of a
cloud and come very straight and low towards us. There
had been a lot of anti-aircraft gunning before, and the sky
was full of black puffs of German shrapnel, but now our
Archies began to fire rapidly and a group of our soldiers
standing close to me raised their rifles like men when a
covey of partridges has been put up, and they took pot-
shots at this low-flying bird, which passed straight over our
heads. It flew in a bee-line for our balloon, which suddenly
began to haul down. It was too late to get safe to earth.
The German aeroplane poised and stooped to it. A second
later the balloon broke into red flame, became a torch of
fire, and fell like a rocket, with a long blazing tail, terribly
beautiful in its descent. For that second those of us who
were watching held our breath, thinking of the two ob-
servers who had been in the basket up there. But before
the second had passed something fell below the flaming
trail, something small and black, and then above it some-
thing else, like a white wisp of cloud, appeared above it,
spreading out. One man had escaped in his parachute.
Less than another second passed, and then another black
object fell, and the white cloud opened above him, and
together, one slightly higher than the other, these two men
floated earthwards, dangerously near the long tail of flame
which had been their balloon. A little nearer, and they
would have been caught in its downward rush of fire, but
I saw them swaying and falling very gently, like puffballs,

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 93

until they touched the earth. The German airman, after
his straight flight and shot, whisked round and fled into the
nearest cloud, chased by a flight of ours who had come round
the sky at full speed, when they saw the burning of the
balloon. It was a bold adventure of the German pilot —
a slight set-off for many exploits of the same kind done
by our flying men during recent days.

For two days now the infantry on both sides have made
no further attack or counter-attack. Whatever may hap-
pen next the balance of success is ours on this ground,
where our troops and Tanks went far through the Hinden-
burg line, captured well over 10,000 prisoners, and now
dominate the enemy's line of communications through
Cambrai.

V

The German Counter-Thrust

November 30
The enemy this morning has made a determined effort to
drive us back from our newly captured positions, and at
about 7.30, after a very violent bombardment, with the use
of many gas shells, delivered a heavy attack with massed
storm troops against our lines round Bourlon Wood. Going
up towards the Front before knowing that this new battle
was impending, I saw the enemy's fierce bombardment of
our lines and other signs of intense conflict. Places where
I have been during the past ten days watching this open
warfare around Bourlon Wood without seeing much hostile
shelling except on the immediate line of attack or counter-
attack, were now being swept by fire, and the sky was full
of the black smoke clouds of German shrapnel and with the
shrill whine of it. It was obvious that the comparative
quietude of the days following our last attack on Fontaine-
Notre-Dame has been used by the enemy to bring up more
guns and store up supplies of ammunition, in order to sup-

94 THE WAY TO VICTORY

port the new attack to-day. It was remarkable to see the
range and intensity of his fire, and he was shooting as far
back as Bapaume, which is now a long way behind our lines.
Many squadrons of our aeroplanes were overhead. The
enemy's thrust against our positions round the forest of
Bourlon was supported by masses of men, who succeeded
in driving through for some distance on the west side of the
forest, but were checked and driven back by our troops,
who fought with the utmost gallantry and self-sacrifice.
The battle is still in progress there, but from the latest re-
ports it seems that the enemy has had to retire, after most
bloody losses.

Sir Julian Byng's strategy and victory when our troops
broke through the Hindenburg line and swept into the
country round Cambrai challenged the enemy to open war-
fare. He has apparently accepted the challenge. It will
be a new opportunity for generalship.

December i
It was inevitable, after our surprise victory on November
20 and our break through the Hindenburg lines to the
country round Cambrai, that the dangers as well as the
advantages of open warfare should return on this part of
the Front.

Our advance, taking in Bourlon Wood on the north and
ground beyond Masnieres and Marcoing, Gonnelieu and
Villers-Guislan on the right, had made for us a new and
rather perilous salient, which might tempt the enemy to
retaliate heavily for the blow we had dealt him. During
the past week he seemed to concentrate his efforts entirely
on the northern side of this salient, by desperate attacks
and counter-attacks on Bourlon Wood, Fontaine-Notre-
Dame, and our lines west of Bourlon Wood by the village
of Mceuvres; but meanwhile he was concentrating heavy
forces with great secrecy, as we had assembled ours, on
our right flank by Crevecceur and Lateau Wood and op-
posite Villers-Guislan, in order to strike through at the

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 95

weakest part of our salient, and so, if he had luck, cut off
large numbers of our men and guns.

The attack delivered yesterday morning had ambitious
plans, and was directed from the north to pierce south-
wards to the Cambrai road, past the west side of Bourlon
Wood, while what was possibly a heavier attack was de-
livered suddenly on our eastern or right flank in the direc-
tion of Gonnelieu and Villers-Guislan. The northern at-
tack failed, as I will tell later, with most bloody losses to
the enemy. The southern attack had a success, which put
a most severe strain upon our generalship and the dis-
ciplined courage of our troops. Unfortunately the enemy
was able to capture some of our guns which were very far
forward, but some of these have been recovered after being
in his hands for a few hours.

After the comparative quietude along this part of the
Front, which I described in a recent message, the enemy
began a violent bombardment on and around Bourlon Wood
on Thursday afternoon. This died down after dusk, and
there was a fairly quiet night. There was no sign of a
great attack until, about 7.30 on Friday morning, the
enemy fired vast numbers of gas shells over our positions
round the forest of Bourlon, and made a strong artillery
demonstration all along the northern side of the salient,
from Mceuvres on the west spreading eastward to Mar-
coing and Masnieres. This was followed later in the north
by heavy infantry attacks with masses of men on the west
side of Bourlon Wood.

On our right flank the attack began suddenly without a
violent bombardment, and many battalions advancing with
immense numbers of machine-guns debouched against our
lines from Crevecceur, where they made straight for Villers-
Guislan. We were holding our forward positions here
thinly, and when this sudden weight of men was flung
against them they were forced to give way and the enemy's
columns broke through our lines rapidly, and the surprise
of the attack was so great for a little while that in most

96 THE WAY TO VICTORY

cases our men were only aware of the enemy's break
through when they saw his troops swarming close to them.
A young gunner told me this morning that he was with
his battery between La Vacquerie and Gonnelieu when, at
about 7.30 yesterday morning, he heard an officer shout
"Stand to your guns!" He rushed out of his dug-out to
his battery and saw, only 300 yards away, a number of
German soldiers advancing with machine-guns. This team
of British gunners, with their officers, did not lose their
nerve, although the surprise was stupefying. The officers
gave orders for the direct laying of the guns on the enemy's
ranks, and they actually fired some rounds and tore gaps
in the German lines. But others ran forward, and were so
close that our gunners were almost surrounded before
they abandoned the battery and ran for safety. Three of
the officers were hit by rifle or machine-gun fire, but the
other gunners made their escape and joined the infantry.
Afterwards they were given rifles and took part in the
counter-attack which recaptured Gouzeaucourt and drove
the enemy back.

December 2
In other parts of the field bodies of our men were caught by
surprise through the rapidity of the first enemy advance,
though the attack as a whole was not unexpected. In the
neighbourhood of Marcoing and Masnieres the men off duty
in some of our English battalions — Middlesex, Royal
Fusiliers, and others of the 29th Division — had been sleep-
ing in cellars and ruined cottages when the sentries gave
the shout of "Stand to!" and all the men were hurried out
to line up in the roads. Some of them told me yesterday
that they saw the enemy advancing over high ground south
of Masnieres in large numbers, and it was clear at a glance
that our more advanced lines had been bent in. There does
not seem to have been a direct attack on Masnieres or Mar-
coing at that time, but some parties of the enemy swung
to the right and got into Les Rues Vertes, which is a suburb

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 97

of Masnieres, and were shattered by the machine-gun fire of
our men, who also swept the ridge south of the St.-Quentin
Canal, so that many German soldiers were seen to fall.

"We strafed them properly," said a boy who had just
come out of the battle with a bullet in his arm," but Fritz
put down a frightful shell-fire into Marcoing this morning.
And it wasn't a picnic for us."

It was at Gouzeacourt that the surprise was greatest on
Friday morning. This village was well behind the line of
our recent advance, and had been organized as a forward
station for wounded and some other purposes. It was here
that many civilians were sent after their rescue from Mas-
nieres, those poor women with babies and perambulators
and pet dogs who made such a strange pitiful crowd on
the morning among our guns and cavalry and German
prisoners. We had a big field ambulance among the ruins,
with a body of splendid young doctors, who worked like
heroes and were very merry and bright when I went up to
see them on the way to further fields. Many members of
this little community believed themselves safe from the
danger of front-line positions, though they did not believe
that their immunity from shell-fire would last for ever.
Early on Friday morning most of the hospital staff was
asleep before the toil of the day. Some of the orderlies
were up making coffee for the doctors. One medical of-
ficer was in his rubber bath, and had just lathered himself
very successfully with soap. In Gouzeacourt there was the
stretching of arms of tired fellows who wanted another
hour's sleep, and the yawning of men who wake to an-
other day of strenuous work and the fragrance of coffee and
frizzling bacon, which is the English soldier's incense to
the gods of the dawn. Suddenly shots rang out. They
were very close. The merry and bright young doctors sat
up and lis.ened. The man with the lather of soap on his
body put nis head out of his tent. More shots snapped out,
like the cracking of whips, and they were right among the
ruins of Gouzeaucourt. The enemy was there among

98 THE WAY TO VICTORY

them. He was inside Gouzeaucourt and all round it. The
lathered man put a towel round his body and, as one of his
comrades told me, hared down the street. Other men
ran, and so got away. On the outskirts of the village some
pioneers retreated down the road to Fins, but in Gouzeau-
court most of the field ambulance staff found themselves
in the hands of the enemy, with railwaymen and mule
drivers and engineers and odds and ends of units who had
been working in the place.

By a queer chance I was on the road to Gouzeaucourt
that morning, and it was only by a fluke of luck that I did
not fall into the hands of the enemy. If I had been fifteen
minutes earlier, or if I had not sensed something strange
on the road, I should not have been writing this message. A
friend of mine in the car with me was in sprightly humour,
rather too sprightly I thought for such an early hour on a
cold morning. He amused himself by the thought of what
would happen if we got pinched by the enemy in Gouzeau-
court or Villers-Pluich after a German break through. It
was an uncanny conversation in view of what has happened,
for neither of us had a ghost of an idea that such a thing
was likely. It was at Fins that both of us began staring
about curiously. There were a lot of men on the road
coming in our direction. There was something queer about
them. They were in odd groups, walking quietly without
disorder, like labourers who have done their day's job and
amble quietly home down the roads. A young gunner
officer came up.

''What has happened?" we asked. "The enemy has
broken through," said the gunner officer. We were silent
for a second, as men are silent who hear incredible things.
Then one of us asked, "Where is the enemy?" The gunner
officer pointed down the road and said, "There; this side
of Gouzeaucourt."

That was our little morning surprise, and we got the car
round pretty quick. Then we tried to approach the Front
by a different road, to the left up by Havrincourt and

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 99

Hermies, and on the way saw and heard other strange
things. Some of our artillery was on the move. We saw
them galloping across the fields. In a quiet place the gun-
ners stood to their guns, as though expecting an attack,
but were not yet firing. Men were packing up ammuni-
tion dumps and hospitals. In some places where on earlier
days there had been much activity there was now a look of
quietude.

An officer rode up to us, and we asked him to tell us the
situation on the north of the salient, for which we were
heading. "The Boche is putting up a big attack," he said,
"but so far we seem to be holding him. Anyhow, he has
not got near this place."

The news had not spread everywhere. In one field some
Tommies were playing football. In some camps men were
frying their breakfast bacon, as though all the world were
at peace. We knew more about it then. We knew that
north as well as south of the salient our men were fighting
hard to hold back the enemy, and that our right wing was
for the moment in jeopardy. As we got towards Havrin-
court we saw the whole line of our northern front by Bour-
lon Wood under shell-fire. The quietude of the past days
was gone, and places where I had spent many hours on the
way to the battlefields were fiery furnaces. Havrincourt
Wood and the roads below it were under an intense bom-
bardment. The enemy was flinging shells down the Bapaume-
Cambrai road. Bourlon Wood, now held by the 47th
(London) Division, and all the fields and villages to the
left of it were filled with clouds of smoke from high ex-
plosives, and for miles our own guns were sweeping a fury
of drumfire over the advancing enemy.

It was then that the enemy was trying to break through
past Bourlon forest on the left and cut off the north-
ern side of the salient. As we know now this northern
attack, which started two hours after that on the right
wing, was supported by six to seven divisions, who ad-
vanced behind storms of gas shells and high explosives.

100 THE WAY TO VICTORY

For a time our troops had to yield ground, and some bodies
of the enemy penetrated almost as far as the sugar factory
on the Cambrai road, but were there repulsed by our men,
who fought with enormous gallantry. They were then
caught by our artillery fire, and these masses of men were
forced into retreat and our guns followed them up, raking
them as they went and slaughtering them. Our infantry
followed them, too, with machine-gun and rifle fire, and
re-established our line except for a bit of trench below
Mceuvres. This northern attack of the enemy had failed
utterly, with bloody losses, and that menace to our lines was
for the day removed.

Overhead the sky was blackened by our aircraft. I have
seen many of our aeroplanes before on days of battle, but
never so many squadrons and flights and single scouts as
on Friday, when they were like flocks of crows over the
enemy's lines. There was aerial fighting all day, for
enemy planes came out in large numbers also, and chal-
lenged our men to this deadly tournament in the skies. At
7.30 there were thirty hostile planes over the Bonavis Farm
area, and many fired white lights continuously over
Gouzeaucourt and Gonnelieu and Villers-Guislan.

All through Friday morning the situation was somewhat
critical on the right by Gouzeaucourt, but it was relieved in
the afternoon by magnificent counter-attacks by the Guards
and some dismounted cavalry and Tanks and bodies of
troops who had been retreating, fighting all the way, ?nd
holding the enemy back by rear-guard actions with rifle-fire
and machine-gun fire. Some of these men have told me
that they fought all the way back like this in short rushes,
lying down for volley-firing, then getting up and retreating
before the advancing swarms of men, then lying down
again for another bout of rifle-fire. They could not hold
back the enemy. Some of their comrades were cut off,
and it was up to the Guards to deliver a decisive counter-
attack in the afternoon.

The Germans had cavalry behind their infantry ready to

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 101

pour through any serious gap in our lines. I saw the
Guards on their way to this battle of Friday afternoon till
Saturday morning. It was a thrilling and noble sight as
the men marched down the roads towards Gouzeaucourt,
knowing that in a few hours they would be fighting in a
terrific way. They were tall and proper men, and they
marched with full packs, but did not seem to feel the
weight of them. They were led on by their bands playing
gay music, with a fine, swinging rhythm in it, and these
men stepped out jauntily, whistling and singing to the
march tunes. Some of them were smoking their pipes,
and others were munching apples and chocolate, and others
were marching silently and thoughtfully, as though seeing
ahead of them the battle into which they would soon be
plunged. So they passed, and when I met some of them
again they were seated in trucks of a train, covered with
blankets to shelter them from the shrewd wind, so that it
was all dark inside when I lifted the flap and looked at the
rows of faces under bandaged heads, and with bodies lying
there grievously wounded. They had fought their fight,
and driven back the enemy beyond Gouzeaucourt and
Quentin Ridge and Gonnelieu, and had broken the gravest
part of the German menace.

Before our counter-attack on Gouzeaucourt on Friday
afternoon, followed by a further battle next morning at
six, the enemy had had time to organize his defence, and
his storm troops had brought up not only large numbers
of machine-guns, but also field-guns with each battalion,
to destroy our Tanks, which they expected to come back
upon them. They had been ordered to attack and hold
with all their strength. As we know from a captured
order, their army-general had told them, in high-sounding
words, that the English surprise attack, supported by
masses of Tanks, had gained a victory near Cambrai, but
now this victory was to be changed into defeat by the valour
of German soldiers and the help of God. They were men
of the 34th, 220th, 9th Reserve, 107th, and 28th Divisions,

102 THE WAY TO VICTORY

the last having been brought up fresh for this attack from
the French Front at Laon. They were good troops, but
they could not stand against the Guards and our dismounted
cavalry and other English units.

On Friday afternoon the Guards attacked from the direc-
tion of Trescault, and another body of them from near
Metz. They were met by the fiercest machine-gun fire, but
enveloped Gouzeaucourt and fought their way into the vil-
lage and beyond it, driving out the enemy by a hard strug-
gle at close quarters, against snipers, machine-gunners, and
bodies of riflemen under the cover of walls. Some of the
infantry fled as soon as the Guards entered the village, but
the machine-gunners fought a stubborn rear-guard action,
and it was difficult to clear Gouzeaucourt of isolated groups,
During their brief tenure of the place they had not been
able to remove much of our material, and our dressing-sta-
tion was very much as it had been left. Some of its per-
sonnel was rescued, with other men who had been hiding
in cellars, and shell-craters, including some American rail-
way men who, as I will tell in another message, had had
astounding adventures.

The enemy retired that evening on to Quentin Ridge and
Gauche Wood, and held in strong force the high ground of
Lateau Wood, from which our 12th Division had with-
drawn with most of their guns. On the following morn-
ing, which was yesterday, the battle was resumed, and an-
other attack by our infantry drove the enemy back from the
Ridge and the Gauche Wood, and out through Gonnelieu,
where we took some 300 prisoners and forty machine-guns,
and recaptured a number of our guns which had been in the
enemy's hands, as well as some of their own guns, which we
took in the original advance on November 20.

Our troops were helped enormously by the gallant work
of the Tanks, whose crews advanced on the enemy and
fought with the highest courage. The enemy's field-guns
were brought into action against them at close range, but
the crew of each Tank fought regardless of all risk, and got

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 103

in among the enemy with their guns and caused great havoc
among them. It was a battle fought almost without artil-
lery on our side on this right wing, and our men had to
advance against the most terrible machine-gun barrage they
have ever known, so that it was sheer human valour which
drove the enemy back and re-established the part of our
line below Masnieres and Marcoing, so relieving our situa-
tion for a time of its chief menace.

Later
During last night we withdrew in the region of Masnieres
in order to straighten our line and get back from a position
made untenable, because of the enemy's holding Lateau
Wood and the ridges to the south-east of this village. It
was after a series of attacks by the enemy, nine separate
attacks during the day, in which more German soldiers
were killed, it is reckoned, than ever before in the same
time. It was a massacre of men, and dead bodies were
piled on dead bodies and wounded on wounded by the
sweep of our men's machine-gun and rifle fire.

I have already told how the first waves of the Germans
flowed up into Les Rues Vertes, the southern suburb of
Masnieres, and were beaten back by our men of the 29th
Division. After that successive bodies of storm troops
tried to force their way into these streets. Nine times they
came on, and nine times they were repulsed with great
slaughter, getting no further than this outer suburb, where
they seized some of the houses and held their outposts. Our
men launched their final counter-attack after five o'clock
yesterday afternoon, and cleared the enemy out and took
groups of prisoners. In the litter of battle they found
a German officer's message to his commander, saying that
his position was untenable owing to the greatness of his
losses and the severity of our counter-attacks.

104 THE WAY TO VICTORY

VI

From Gonnelieu to Gouzeacourt

December 3
Before German troops advanced in their violent attack
against our lines, which began last Friday morning and has
been renewed to-day on our right wing with fresh troops,
they were commanded in the order of the day by their
army-general to retake all the ground lost by our victory
on November 20, and promised that if they captured six
kilometres they would gain peace. The German army
on our front has been fighting for a long time under the
impulse of these illusory promises of peace. There was
to be peace if they held out till August, there was to be
peace if they won the battle of Flanders; now there is to
be peace if they gain the six kilometres of ground lost less
than a fortnight ago. It is a pitiful thing, revealing the
peace hunger of men who see nothing but slaughter ahead
of them unless they can end this war. But to be just to
them they are fighting now as hard as ever they have
fought, and with a proud and savage spirit.

A few days ago, when our North-country infantry of the
62nd Division made their magnificent attack on Bourlon
village, some of the German officers refused to surrender
to the accursed English, as they called us. Two of them
blew out their brains rather than be taken prisoner, and a
non-commissioned officer committed hara-kiri before our
men by thrusting a bayonet through his entrails. That is
proof of the bitterness with which these Germans are fight-
ing. Those men belonged to the Cockchafers, or Maikae-
fer, who were shattered by the Welsh in the early days of
the Flanders fighting, but other regiments not so famous
are sacrificing themselves in their desperate attacks against
us, as on the last day of last month, when they came down
west of Bourlon Wood shoulder to shoulder in massed

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 105

lines, and were mown down by machine-guns and the rifle-
fire of our troops and by our field-guns, who never had such
human targets.

To-day's attack is another thrust from a front extending
between Vendhuille and Epehy, with its spear-heads
directed against La Vacquerie, Gonnelieu, and other places
east of Gouzeaucourt, and south of Masnieres. A new
German division has been brought from Flanders for this
new attempt to break our lines. It is the eighth. The
enemy's attack began this morning with violent destructive
fire on a wide front following a storm of gas shells put over
during the night, and a big battle is now in progress, with
most intense fighting round Gonnelieu and La Vacquerie
and south of Marcoing.

It is too soon to give any details, and few reports have
come back, but our troops are holding their lines with heroic
valour against enormous forces. So did those battalions
fight who stood the first shock of attack last Friday morn-
ing, when the enemy broke through to Gouzeaucourt.

Round by Gonnelieu there were Lancashire troops of
the 55th Division who had fought also in our original ad-
vance on the extreme right. "They must have fought like
tigers" is the verdict of troops near them, but the story of
their last stand cannot yet be told.

Before I could mention our withdrawal from Masnieres
on Sunday night, I gave a few details of the last fighting
there, and that also is a wonderful story of human heroism.
Our men of the 29th Division had to encounter nine German
attacks in great force advancing into the suburb of Les
Rues Vertes under the protection of frightful bombard-
ment. They repulsed these attacks nine times with machine-
gun and rifle fire until enemy officers sent back word that
their position in this suburb was untenable and they had to
retreat from our annihilating fire. But by this time Mas-
nieres was at the end of a sharp salient formed by the
enemy's gain of the ridge below, and during the night, ac-
cording to orders, our men withdrew unknown to the

106 THE WAY TO VICTORY

enemy, who were busy with their dead and wounded. Even
on Sunday morning the Germans did not know that not a
single English soldier remained in Masnieres, and they bom-
barded it anew before sending forward more storm troops
in the afternoon, when they discovered its abandonment.

Yesterday afternoon at the same time they made three
separate attacks on La Vacquerie, and each time were
shattered by machine-gun and rifle fire, so that the ground
is strewn with their dead.

Fighting just as hard and just as terrible made a horror
of Gonnelieu, where the Lancashire men of the 55th Divi-
sion were fighting. The streets of that village are littered
with bodies, and the place must be a shambles. It is dif-
ficult to calculate the German losses since that hour of 7.30
on Friday morning, when they made their tremendous at-
tempt to reverse our victory of November 20, and to re-
capture their lost ground. We have inevitably suffered
heavy losses, too, in this enormous struggle to beat back the
enemy's massed forces and to hold our lines against great
fire. But the enemy's losses in attack must be fantastic
in their tragic numbers. Our machine-gun fire has swept
their ranks time and time and again, mowing down long
lines of men, and in the northern part of the attack espe-
cially our artillery had cut swathes in their battalions.

I have described in as much detail as possible what hap-
pened at Gouzeaucourt and neighbourhood, when the
enemy drove in our line and swept forward over some of
our newly gained ground, but I have not yet told much
about the beginning of that attack, the most ambitious part
of the attack on the northern side of the salient that same
morning. All through the night it had been quiet about
Bourlon Wood. At 4.30, before dawn, our men there and
on the left by Tadpole Copse and troops to the right of
Moeuvres reported all quiet. It was not until several hours
later that one or two abrupt messages came back from the
front line, and then no more. "Enemy advancing on us."
"Heavy concentration of hostile troops coming down past

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 107

Quarry Wood." "Enemy approaching our brigade head-
quarters."

Approaching brigade headquarters ! Why, that was well
behind our lines. If that were true the enemy must have
broken through in depth, and there would be the devil
to pay. It was not true about brigade headquarters. The
message was in error, and meant to say the battalion head-
quarters, which was quite another thing, but it gave a
shock to the officers who were receiving other messages
from their right, reporting that the enemy had broken
through at Gonnelieu and Villers-Guislan, and that later
he was on the west side of Gouzeaucourt, and that many
of our men had been surrounded. A shock, but nothing to
cause loss of nerve to men who know that a large sum of
human life depends on their coolness to deal with a crisis
like this.

"Are your guns all right?" went a question down the
wire, and the answer came back, "We're all right; killing
them in hundreds."

At 9.15 a.m. large bodies of German troops, to the
strength of a division, were seen entering Mceuvres. An
hour later our SOS went up on the west side of the Canal
du Nord, and thirty-five minutes later on the east side of the
canal.

Long waves of men in field grey — no need to ask their
business — were seen coming like slow-moving waves over
the rolling ground towards the Bapaume-Cambrai road,
south-west of Bourlon Forest. Our men of the 2nd Divi-
sion, which had relieved the 36th Ulster Division on No-
vember 2,7, and of the 47th (London) Division, saw them
lying behind machine-guns, lying in tussocky grass with
rifles ready, standing on the fire-step of trenches below
Mceuvres, on the west bank of the canal, and standing to
the guns, field-batteries, and howitzers in open country not
far back from these advancing hordes.

Our men were staring at these grey fellows who came
over with packs on their backs. "Looked as if they was

108 THE WAY TO VICTORY

come to stay/' said a Cockney fellow afterwards, and then
he added with a grim laugh, "and they was." Some of
them stayed alive, and many of them stayed dead. Our
machine-guns were arranged for an attack like this. They
had been waiting for it. They had arranged direct bar-
rage-fire and enfilade-fire to kill an attack or counter-attack
any way it should come. And now on that Friday morn-
ing they let go, and fired as our machine-gunners have
rarely fired before, in steady sweeps of bullets, belt after
belt, till each machine-gun team had a great litter of spent
belts lying around them.

One battery alone fired over 70,000 rounds at no fewer
than ten successive waves of German infantry. As we
know from prisoners, they were Germans of the 49th, 16th,
and 20th Divisions. These men advanced with more than
Oriental dedication to death. The foremost lines were
swept by machine-gun, rifle, and artillery fire, and fell dead
and wounded in the grass. Other men came behind them
and fell. Others followed, and others, and others, these
waves of field-grey fellows, and always they came a little
nearer in spite of their losses, survivors closing up the ranks
and coming forward until they were within about 1000
yards of our machine-guns, still sweeping them as scythes
sweep a line of wheat. Then in the centre they wavered,
broke and fled followed by all our fire, by heavy artillery as
well as light artillery and rifle fire and more machine-gun
fire. Only on the German right and our left did the enemy
enter our line, that was in the trenches on the outskirts of
Mceuvres, just north of the Cambrai road, where we held
a German communication trench running up at right angles
from the old German trench system now in our hands.

Our men here had to retreat from that isolated bit of
trench, and to abandon about 200 yards of old German sup-
port trench, but not without hard fighting. It was fight-
ing with bayonet and bombs, and it is still fighting with
bayonets and bombs, for it is going on now as for three
days past, and the Royal Fusiliers told me they have been

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 109

killing Germans all that time, and terrible slaughter was
done by the South Staffordshires, Middlesex Regiment,
Berkshires, ist King's Royal Rifles, and the Oxford and
Bucks of the 2nd Division. Before these trenches there is
a litter of dead, but more where the long lines came over
west of Bourlon Wood, and, like water instead of human
life, followed in wave after wave, and were spilt upon the
earth. Thirty prisoners have been taken in the trenches
where the enemy penetrated. They talk of their losses
like men who have seen a great tragedy; incredible losses,
if one did not know the truth. They believe that the Ger-
man High Command will not order another attack like that
because of its cost, but there they have more belief in the
humanity of the German High Command than experience
warrants or the law of war. Perhaps the enemy has not
abandoned his original hope of regaining all the ground
we took from him when the Tanks and troops broke the
Hindenburg lines, and will go to far lengths of sacrifice in
blood and agony to achieve this purpose.

In the past fortnight our troops have done so many mar-
vellous acts of courage that I despair of ever giving more
than faint far-off glimpses of the great sum of valour re-
vealed in all these attacks and counter-attacks. I wish I
could give the names of many single men, like one brilliant
young soldier who now lies dead, and whose life was a fine
promise of genius to our Army; but the rules are against
it, and even in the time I have, writing between one battle
and another, I can only scramble down a few broad pictures
of all this struggle. The spirit of our men in this fighting
has never been more audacious in attack, nor more endur-
ing in defence. In attack it is shown, as one example out
of a hundred, when two young Yorkshire officers on the
night before Sir Julian Byng's historic victory, out in ad-
vance of a Tank in trouble, crawled through the enemy's
barbed wire by Havrincourt and reconnoitred the ground
so well that many lives were saved by their guidance, and
the few scraps I had written about these North-country

110 THE WAY TO VICTORY

troops of the 62nd Division who fought through Bourlon
village on November 27 do no justice to the most amazing
fight, in which they beat back the enemy from buried houses,
fighting from wall to wall, gained high ground which had
been lost in the Bourlon Wood by heavy counter-attacks,
wired it that night and made it secure in defence.

It was a Yorkshire officer belonging to the 185th Brigade
of the 62nd Division who rescued the East Surreys left in
Bourlon village, 500 of them, with seven officers. A signal-
ler came back through the enemy's lines with news of their
plight, and then collapsed after handing in his message.
The officer volunteered to go into the village and guide the
East Surreys back. He went in right through the enemy's
lines, through streets of dead and German machine-gun
posts, and it was his guidance which helped to save the East
Surreys. London men and Lancashire men have done acts
as brave as this, which one day must be told.

December 2
I had not time to tell yesterday of my meeting by chance
a number of American railwaymen and engineers who had
been engaged in construction work near Gouzeaucourt, and
running up trains laden with supplies for our troops in the
neighbourhood of Villers-Pluich and Villers-Guislan. I
saw these men yesterday morning after they had been sur-
rounded by the enemy for hours, and had then, with great
cunning, made their escape to our lines. They are a splen-
did body of men, hard and keen and good-humoured, who
made a joke of their thrilling adventure and of their pres-
ent danger, which was not at an end, as the enemy was
putting over heavy shells at odd moments, and one burst
with an enormous explosion only 100 yards or so away from
them when I stood among them.

"I guess I had a near call," said one of them from St.
Louis, Missouri, and he told me how when he was standing
by his train, which had a full load of rations for the Eng-
lish troops, he was suddenly startled by shells bursting

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 111

round his engine and saw the enemy approaching over the
ridge by Villers-Guislan.

"One of your Tommies was standing near me," said the
American, "and he bent down and picked up a bit of shrap-
nel, and said, 'Bio wed if it ain't hot,' and then he looked up
again and said, 'I'm blessed if old Fritz hasn't gone and
broken through.' Just as he said that, a shell burst close,
and the poor lad was killed, not an arm's length away from
me. I guessed it was time to quit, and I ran hard and
found the enemy all round me. So I took to hiding in a
shell-hole, and lay there until this morning."

Four of his comrades in the engine crew had the same
experience, and one was wounded in the thigh, but they all
had the luck to escape. Another American engineman was
first startled by a German aeroplane, which came straight
down the track near Villers-Pluich, flying very low and
firing a machine-gun.

"I hadn't a steel hat handy," said this man, "so I picked
up a petrol tin and put that on my head, and thought it
might be better than nothing. Then I saw Germans, and
thought to myself this is a queer kind of fix for a fellow
from America laying rails behind the English lines, so I
crouched down behind the engine and hoped the Germans
wouldn't see me. I guess they didn't, or I shouldn't be
here."

Another American came up with a grin on his face. "I'm
from Tennessee," he said, and he was a tall, lean, swarthy
fellow, as like a Mexican cowboy as any fellow of that kind
I have seen on the films. "What happened to you?" I
asked ; and he told me that all sorts of things had happened
to him since six o'clock the previous morning, but he hadn't
time to tell the yarn, except that after his escape from
the Germans, who were all around him, he got through and
borrowed a Tommy's gun and fought all day with our in-
fantry, and liked it.

"It's not the first time I've held a gun in my hand," he

112 THE WAY TO VICTORY

said. "I was in the Spanish-American War and other
places. I guess I knocked out a few Boches for you."

One of the American railway teams had their track
blown up ahead of them by forward patrols of Germans,
and these also tell me that they thought it time to quit, and
quitted. But afterwards they formed part of some patrols
who volunteered for service with our infantry, and so saw
some very hard fighting with out Guards at Gouzeacourt.
Among them was a number of New York men.

All these Americans showed a high and splendid spirit,
and our men are loud in praise of them. "It was the dog-
gonest experience I have ever had," said one of them, "and
a mighty close call anyway."

They had some casualties among them, but by good luck
only a few.

December 4
All day yesterday the enemy continued his thrusts against
our lines from the St. Quentin Canal by Marcoing south-
ward to the neighbourhood of Gonnelieu and La Vac-
querie. His plan of attack was direct and obvious. It
was to drive through our lines below Marcoing by way of
the small copse to the south-east of the village, and at the
same time to break through towards Villers-Pluich and
Metz-en-Couture by gaining the high ground of La
Vacquerie and its surrounding heights and the St. Quentin
Ridge. In this endeavour the enemy has flung in large
numbers of men, at least the battalions of six divisions,
on that narrow front of attack, not counting the cost, not
hesitating to send forward new battalions after those shat-
tered by our fire, never weakening in his pressure against
our men, even where he could make no advance, and send-
ing up immediate supports to take advantage of any tem-
porary success.

So at the end of the year we find ourselves engaged in a
battle more decisive in its issues, perhaps, than all the fight-
ing of the months which have preceded it, though forced

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 113

upon the enemy by all that has gone before — by his weak-
ening man-power after his enormous casualties in Artois
and Flanders, by his loss of the Passchendaele Ridge,
which has robbed him of his great north wall of defence, so
that he may lie open to attack in the plains next year, and
by the immediate threat to his line of communication
through Cambrai after the smashing of his Hindenburg
lines by Sir Julian Byng's army. He seems to be forcing
a decisive fight in open country, and how much of political
and how much of military significance there is in this it is
for other people than myself to estimate. His prisoners
tell us that they have been promised peace if they win this
battle. Let it go at that.

With whatever inspiration they may have behind them
the German troops are fighting with most fierce and stub-
born courage, and because of that their losses yesterday and
since Friday morning last have been, in our men's judg-
ment— and they ought to know — enormous, as the price of
what they have gained. They have not gained very much
yet, considering the violence of their efforts, though by
sheer repetition of their attacks by masses of men flinging
themselves into the face of our fire, they have extended
their progress towards Marcoing, won some of the high
ground about La Vacquerie, and have a foothold on the
St. Quentin Ridge above our country round Metz and
Gouzeaucourt. Our men, therefore, are in the midst of a
struggle as severe as anything that has faced British troops
since the second Battle of Ypres. Since then on this front
our enemy has been on the defensive, apart from his furious
counter-attacks in the battles of the Somme and the Arras
fighting and Flanders, which were for defensive reasons.
But now the offensive is with him, and he is forcing the
pace and fighting all out. It is ferocious fighting, pre-
ceded as usual on the enemy's side by poison gas and sup-
ported by heavy artillery. Our men are denying the enemy's
advance yard by yard, and if ground is yielded, as in our
withdrawal from the salient at Masnieres, and yesterday

114 THE WAY TO VICTORY

from Marcoing Copse below the Chapel of the Virgin at
the entrance of the town, and from some of the slopes
about La Vacquerie, it is only after a butchery of Ger-
mans and rear-guard actions which, I suppose, will be
counted as among the most bloody episodes of this war.

It is perhaps unnecessary to say that our men realize the
high importance of this battle, yet I must say it, because it
is in each man's mind, and is the guiding thought which
urges these men of ours to the most desperate resistance
in places where for a time they have been cut off or out-
numbered. The wounded who come back out of that zone
of shell-fire and machine-gunning find only one comfort in
their state, and that is that the enemy could not break their
lines, or if he broke them for a time was thrust back again.

As long as I live I shall never forget those Guards and
English county troops whom I met the other morning
after out counter-attacks, which drove the enemy out of
Gouzeaucourt and back from Gonnelieu. These men had
been through machine-gun fire diabolical in its fury. They
had lain out all night under heavy shell-fire, and had at-
tacked again in the following morning, and had been
wounded, and then had hobbled back to the first-aid dress-
ing-station, and now after getting a bandage round their
wounds lay in trucks on the light railway, huddled to-
gether in the darkness under tarpaulin and blanket covers
which a wind with the edge of a knife in its blast tried to
tear away from them. They had seen war at its worst —
savage fighting at close quarters, fighting through houses
and over broken walls and down in dark cellars, and they
had fought cold and fought thirsty, and had been sur-
rounded all night by the awful sounds and sights of such a
battlefield. So they did not speak light-hearted things nor
breezy things, which those who know not war like to put
into the mouths of our men, but gravely and quietly they
described the battle and their own share in it, and what was
then the peril of the situation. I spoke to them under the
cover of those trucks in a strange twilight which was al-

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 115

most darkness, so that I could see the faces of only one or
two men, and beyond that only blurred shadow faces.
But these men's voices rose up from the bottom of the
trucks where they lay, like voices speaking out of that
shadow world where there is only truth.

One man said: "I didn't care for anything as long as
we drove them back," and another said : 'We knew we had
got to get them back, or they would be all over us, so we
let them have it and went through Gouzeaucourt without a
check," and another said: 'Their machine-gun fire was
frightful," and another: "The Germans want to make a
big battle of this. There will be some bloody fighting be-
fore we're through with it." Then a last voice laughed in
a grim way, and said: "I'm out of it now with a hole in

my leg."

In another place I sat down by the side of a young gun-
ner who had lost his guns in the first break through. He
was one of those who had been given rifles and put into the
line with infantry and dismounted cavalry, and American
railwaymen and Canadian engineers, and men of the labour
battalions. He was only a boy, but he spoke with the
gravity of an old man as he leaned forward, looking at his
wounded leg in a thoughtful way.

"It's Fritz's turn now," he said. "He's trying to get
back on us. We shall have to put up a big fight to stop
lm.

"Do you think we shall?" I asked. He looked up at me
under his steel hat, and said, "We've got to."

And that is the spirit in which our men are fighting — a
stern, grim, stubborn spirit, holding on to positions until
they become untenable, and sometimes after they have be-
come untenable, so that bodies of them are cut off, as
yesterday were some groups on the north side of St. Ouen-
tin Canal by Marcoing, fighting to the last so that other
troops may fall back in safety. Nobody is able to see
these things among the streets of ruined villages, in sunken
roads and bits of trench by La Vacquerie and Marcoing

/

116 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Copse and the country round Gonnelieu. Only the men
who come back can tell of them, and many do not come
back, and some who come back do not tell much, because
these things cannot be put into words by simple men who do
not analyse their own emotions, or say more than "it was
very hot" in their description of a scene where, perhaps,
they were a little group of worn and weary men holding
a forlorn hope, with many dead and wounded round them,
and the last belt of a machine-gun to hold back swarms of
field-grey foes. To-day there is one such post beyond Mar-
coing, and yesterday a few thin groups of men held out to
the last in Marcoing Copse and round La Vacquerie before
the enemy came through his dead and wounded in another
attacking wave.

Yesterday the enemy delivered at least three big attacks
on La Vacquerie, and this was the storm centre of all the
battle, and it is certain from what all our men say that the
German losses in that neighbourhood were very great, so
that the ground is strewn with bodies who fell under our
machine-gun and rifle fire. All the German battalions
advanced in dense order, without attempt of concealment,
so that their ranks withered under our men's steady fire.
At 3.15 in the afternoon a new and>powerful thrust was
made by German storm troops west of Masnieres, in the
direction of Marcoing, and for a time our line was pierced.
But our supporting troops closed up and the gap was stopped,
and a quick counter-attack threw back the enemy's line
at least part of the way it had come, though they are now
on the eastern edge of Marcoing, held at bay by that one
brave little outpost, which may have withdrawn by the
time I write.

The 1 66th Brigade of the 55th Division, all Lancashire
battalions, countered repeated attacks westwards from Gon-
nelieu, and our artillery shattered many of the enemy's
attempts to assemble and smothered many of his guns with
shell-fire, especially in the Banteau Ravine, where he had a

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 117

large concentration of batteries, so that many of them were
put out of action.

Some of our men who were cut off in the earlier fighting,
like those taken prisoner at Gouzeaucourt, have found their
way back into our lines after hiding on the enemy's side of
the line, and among them are some English lads belonging
to a party of forty who were taken prisoner and put into a
barbed-wire enclosure beyond the Escaut River and Canal.
But our men who found themselves there did not sit down
in despair. They waited till dark and then made their
escape, and working back towards our lines swam the canal
and so got back to their comrades in Marcoing.

Other men have been rescued in our counter-attacks.
One of whom I have just heard was a gunner officer with
one of our generals who had his headquarters in a quarry
near Gouzeaucourt. When the Germans broke through
on Friday morning the general and some of his staff had to
made a rapid retreat down the road, and were nearly caught.
The gunner officer was not so quick, because of a wound in
his knee, and fell into the enemy's hands, but they did not
trouble to take him back with them when they fled before
the Guards.

It is too soon yet to claim any decisive results after all
this fighting, but in spite of the enemy's gain of ground
yesterday, which may be increased a little to-day, or to-
morrow— let us be prepared for that — the anxiety of our
defence has lifted perceptibly during the last twelve hours,
and men of responsibility are breathing more easily again
after hours of suspense and tension, inevitable at such a
time when the enemy was launching the full weight of his
attack. He has struck his heaviest blows, it seems. At
least, the full shock of his first blow, upon which much of
his success depended, has been withstood, and our lines have
remained firm after a few withdrawals, as at Masnieres, and
the neighbourhood of Gonnelieu. The menace of anything
like a big German victory overbalancing and overwhelming
our own dramatic success of November 20, seems to have

118 THE WAY TO VICTORY

passed, and with it the grandiose promises of the German
command for the inspiration of their soldiers.

A frightful price has been paid by the enemy for his
slight progress, and there is now good reason to believe that
whatever strength they decide to bring up it can be resisted
in the same way, with here and there, no doubt, some yield-
ing of ground, with orderly withdrawals from positions
made too costly to hold against continual waves of attack
and great storms of fire, but without any collapse or
debacle which might repay the enemy for this last of-
fensive of the year.

His first plan seems to have been well thought out.
Against such a salient as we held after our break through
the Hindenburg line it had a chance of success. He was
cunning in bringing up his troops secretly, as we had done
ours, and in holding the hour of his first attack until after
our morning patrols had gone the rounds and reported all
quiet in his line. But he was disappointed by the utter
failure of the northern attack against Bourlon Wood, and
by losing very quickly what advantage he had gained on
our right flank in the first surprise.

After that he has been held and punished in a dreadful
way, and the grim valour of our soldiers, fighting him
every yard of the way in this fierce, close, and bloody strug-
gle, where human tragedy and human courage are crowded
into small plots of ground, has broken the German assault
in its first and most decisive phase. That, at least, is our
sober hope and belief, though the fortune of war will
decide.

December 6
The Commander-in-Chief has announced this afternoon in
his official communique the news of our withdrawal from
part of the ground captured in our advance on November
20, in order to avoid holding the sharp salient made by
Bourlon Wood and our line running down east and west
of it. This operation has been very secretly done, and was

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 119

carried out with the finest courage and discipline by our
troops after the plan was decided. It was not an easy or
safe thing to do, and its success depended on the enemy's
complete ignorance of our intention and the valour of the
rear-guards holding on to positions to the last possible
moment, ready to fight hard until the main bodies of troops
had withdrawn to our present line of defence. Any pre-
mature discovery might have led to immediate pressure of
the enemy against our forward posts and considerable dan-
ger to those falling back behind them. So far from this
happening the enemy was thoroughly deceived as to our
intentions, and long after the withdrawal had been effected
on our left yesterday morning, he put down a heavy bom-
bardment on the abandoned trenches near Mceuvres, and
afterwards launched a strong infantry attack on those
positions, watched at a distance by our men, who chuckled
at this furious advance upon mythical defenders. It seemed
a huge joke to our men, whose sense of humour was sharp-
ened by their sense of safety.

The withdrawal began the night before last. It was very
cold and still over the battlefields, with a hard frost on the
ground and a bright moon shining over its whiteness. But
mist floated about the fields, and our men moved silently
like shadows in it, and if the enemy saw any movement he
did not suspect anything more than the business of relief.
It was in the Bourlon Wood area that, as yesterday morn-
ing drew on, he first suspected a strange emptiness. He
sent his patrols forward, and as they crept into the wood
and south of Bourlon village, they must have seen pretty
quickly signs of our having packed up and gone. We left
nothing behind, and destroyed dug-outs and works which
the enemy had built, and we had occupied during the fort-
night's adventure.

At midday yesterday small bodies of Germans were seen
advancing very cautiously over the rising ground south of
Bourlon village, and half an hour later groups of them
approached the ruins of the sugar factory, which had once

120 THE WAY TO VICTORY

been their balloon shed. They hesitated here ; did not seem
to like the look of things ; crept round and about; and then,
spurring their courage, went inside. Later, after news had
been taken back or signalled back, strong forces of the
enemy came forward, showing themselves on the sky-line
and advancing in open order down the slope. At one
o'clock our artillery, which had been very quiet waiting for
their targets, opened fire, and swept all this ground with
shrapnel, so that all these standing figures fell, some of
them killed and wounded, and all of them taking to earth.
Our bombardment was maintained, but all through the day
up to seven o'clock in the evening groups and scattered
bodies of German troops were seen working southwards to
get in touch with our new line of defence, which they could
not locate. A little while after dusk yesterday about 400
of them were seen on the south side of the Cambrai road,
and at nine o'clock our men saw another 300 or so south-
east of Bourlon Wood. I hear that two prisoners were
captured by our men from these forward patrols, and they
said that three battalions of their regiment were all ad-
vancing in order to maintain pressure on our rear-guards
and get in contact, if possible, with our main line. All
through the day hostile aeroplanes flew over our lines trying
to observe our new positions, but they could not have dis-
covered what they wanted, for long after our abandonment
of Bourlon Wood and other positions around it, the enemy
heavily shelled these places. During the afternoon con-
siderable bodies of men seemed to be assembling in the
centre of our line for an asault in mass, but our guns dealt
with them and shattered them where they were, under cover
of a sunken road. This morning the enemy still seemed
bewildered as to our exact positions and intentions.

On our right wing yesterday there was violent fighting
again around La Vacquerie, but the enemy's new thrust
in that direction was repulsed after much killing of his
men, and we pressed him back from some of the ground he
had gained in the earlier fighting.

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 121

The events between November 20 and our strategical
withdrawal from Bourlon Wood to the present line form
one of the most thrilling and extraordinary episodes in the
history of this war. It began when Sir Julian Byng's
audacious and cunning plan of attack without preliminary
bombardment and with large numbers of Tanks stupefied
the enemy and opened a wide breach in the Hindenburg
line through which our infantry and cavalry passed out into
the open country round Cambrai, and did amazing things
which have not yet all been told — as, for instance, the story
of the German prisoners that some of our troopers actually
rode into Cambrai itself on that first night of victory.

Ten thousand prisoners were taken by us, and it is be-
lieved that, but for certain elements of bad luck, Cambrai
might have been ours, though it was not within our expec-
tations. The enemy was quick in hurling up guns and
reinforcements and developed violent counter-attacks. In
all those he lost prodigiously in men, and the number of his
casualties must have been extravagantly high, even accord-
ing to accounts given by his own prisoners. After all this
fighting and one day of vicissitudes, during which the
enemy had the luck to get through a weak place in our
advanced lines and overrun some of the country we had
gained, we had withdrawn to strong positions on ground
seized from the enemy in a cheap and easy way. Here we
remain secure, with good observation and strong lines
behind us.

December 7
We are now back in strong defensive positions south of
Bourlon Wood and west of Gonnelieu and Villers-Guislan,
chosen when we were forced to withdraw, and with Hinden-
burg lines, old Hindenburg front and support lines behind
us. I have already given yesterday some details of the
way in which our retirement was achieved with fine skill
and discipline by our covering troops in the neighbourhood
of Bourlon Wood. It is a proof of the wonderful secrecy

122 THE WAY TO VICTORY

with which these plans were carried out that there was only
one casualty in Bourlon Wood during the time our men
were getting away. They were glad to get away. For big
strategical reasons we may regret that we could not get
hold of the black forest on high ground which dominates
the northern approaches to Cambrai, and for which our men
fought with fine valour, so that always those dim glades
will be haunted by heroic memories of young Yorkshire
lads who fought and died there, and of the pilots and crews
of Tanks who came crashing through the undergrowth,
rooting out nests of German machine-gunners and trenches
full of infantry dug behind barricades of fallen trunks. If
we had succeeded in widening our hold on all the high
ground around the forest, and getting beyond the village of
Fontaine-Notre-Dame, Cambrai would have been a costly
possession for the enemy, and we might have gained the
town as a crowning prize of the year's fighting. That was not
to be. It was not within the expectations of our first plan
of attack on November 20, though the success of that day
raised high hopes in some minds.

That we have abandoned Bourlon Wood will be a disap-
pointment to map-makers, who find it good to draw new
lines of our advance. To our men who had to hold it, the
withdrawal was a relief from a place of horror. When I
watched the shelling of that forest I shuddered in spirit at
the sinister aspect of it, that big black belt of trees on the
ridge above Graincourt and Anneux, and all the country
beyond Anneux, so grim, so still, so silent. There was
never sign of life within it. The trees seemed more motion-
less than those of other woods, and blacker below the
clouds or blue sky. It was such a forest where, in old
days, lonely knights would have crossed themselves as they
went through, the rider expecting to meet witch-women and
evil creatures. Our knights and men-at-arms met things
as bad as that. The enemy flung his gas shells into the
forest, soaked all its glades and undergrowth with poison
gas, so that every bush reeked with it, and all the sodden

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 123

leaves of autumn fall so that moisture on tree-trunks and
every bead of dew or rain on branches and twigs was a drop
of poison, and floating mists were heavy with it. In a place
that is thoroughly gassed men are compelled to work and
fight and sleep in their gas-masks ; they dare not take them
off to drink or eat When our men left Bourlon Wood
there was enough poison in the wood to last for three or
four days. On that Tuesday night last, when our men
stole away in good order and in utter silence, they were
wearing their gas-masks as usual under their steel hats, so
that as moonlight filtered through the tracery of the branches
and slanted through the tall, black pillars of the quiet trees,
our soldiers must have looked horribly like men bewitched
into foul forms by spirits from this wood. They broke the
evil spell when outside this forest of Bourlon. They pulled
off their masks — these white-faced, weary fellows of ours —
and breathed freely again. The enemy shelled the wood
very heavily again on Wednesday morning, flung more gas
into it, so that wreaths of white vapour curled about those
black trunks, but our men watched all that from a distance,
and said : "Fritz can go on with that as long as he likes."
Along other parts of our line of withdrawal, round
Graincourt and Anneux and Cantaing, and round the
peninsula made by the bend of the canal by Marcoing, some
hint must have been given to the enemy of our intentions,
because of explosions caused by the blowing up of his
dug-outs and tunnels, and the bridges and locks, by small
parties of men who stayed on to the last moment and then
touched off the fuses. Fires rose, making the night-sky
ruddy for miles around, and these loud concussions of
sound shaking the earth must have warned the enemy
that we were preparing for a move. But the strength of
our outpost line and the activity of our rear-guards, who
fought his patrols as they pushed out and killed or scat-
tered them, kept him perplexed and anxious, and after-
wards, when he sent larger forces forward, waves of storm

1U THE WAY TO VICTORY

troops advancing in the open, many of them were destroyed
by our artillery.

All through Tuesday night out batteries were moving
back to their new positions in that grey moonlit shadow-
world of the battlefield beyond the ruins of Havrincourt
and the Flesquieres Ridge, and the long winding trail of the
Hindenburg line. They were the guns which had been
brought up secretly a fortnight before for Sir Julian
Byng's surprise attack, and had galloped forward with their
limbers after the great break through, and then in those far
positions perilously near the enemy's lines, had broken up
massed counter-attacks, and on that Friday morning when
the enemy came through our lines on the right, had saved
the situation by smashing back the long, dense streams of
men who tried to break our northern lines in the salient.
Among them were guns which had been withdrawn hastily
after rapid firing, when on that same Friday morning large
bodies of field-grey men swarmed suddenly very close to
them, and one battery was there, as I shall tell later in a
strange narrative of heroic defence, which maintained fire
for an hour and a half several hundreds of yards in advance
of any infantry, utterly isolated, but sweeping the enemy's
lines as they advanced from Crevecceur and keeping back
their battalions by great slaughter. These guns were in
their new positions by the coming of dawn, and all next
day they found many human targets, so that the enemy's
progress towards our outpost line was marked by lines of
dead. Yesterday afternoon he was still in doubt as to our
real line of defence, and still his patrols were being resisted
so strongly by our outposts that he had to send up rein-
forcements of infantry to press back these brave little
groups of men.

At 3.30 in the afternoon these men, forming a reconnais-
sance in force, advanced upon Orival Wood, which is a
small copse south-east of Graincourt. Our guns sighted
them, and opened fire with such intensity, after getting the
range, that a rough estimate numbers the German dead at

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 125

2000 in that attempt. In the same way, three German bat-
talions, advancing to attack from the direction of Grain-
court, were utterly shattered and dispersed. Round about
the village of Anneux, which we abandoned at the same
time as Bourlon Wood, the enemy was so ignorant of our
departure that he put a violent storm of fire into this place,
and then attacked it with a considerable force of infantry,
as though it were fully garrisoned, though not a man or boy
remained among its ruins.

VII

The Triumph of the Tanks

December 7
In all this recent fighting — not only when our troops
swarmed througn the Hindenburg lines and out into the
open country towards Cambrai, but during the last few days
when the enemy has tried to come back at us with tremen-
dous blows — the strange grey forms of the Tanks have been
moving over the open fields and through the ruins of vil-
ages, and in outposts of our line where the sweep of fire
from their flanks has kept the enemy at bay or chased him
back. I saw them on the first morning of our break through
up by Villers-Pluich and Flesquieres — queer, low-squatting
things moving slowly in the creeping mists, no more visible
than shadows in that twilight of the early day — and after-
wards I saw them below Havrincourt on the way to Grain-
court and Bourlon Wood on a day of battle, many of them
crawling about the battlefield or resting under cover like
herds of prehistoric animals. A few of them, hit by shell-
fire, or broken down after long travels over the bad ways,
lie about the slopes and ridges of these battlegrounds, as a
few of them lie still, rusting and rotting — poor, broken
skeletons — on the old battlefields of the Somme, the relics of
that day of great adventure on September 15 last year when
the secret of the Tanks was first revealed, and our men

126 THE WAY TO VICTORY

went laughing behind them into battle — some of them, per-
haps, believing that they had only to go on walking behind
Tanks to get the enemy out of France and Belgium.

That first joyous hope was quickly checked. It was
obvious that the Tanks were vulnerable, and that in bad,
wet ground like that in Flanders they were apt to get
bogged at the wrong time, and that there were not enough
of them to kill the deadly menace of machine-gun fire, so
that infantry had no magic shield to save them from it.
There was not enough of them, that was one trouble. I
remember more than a year ago sitting at the mess table
with some Scottish officers — the Gordons — and one of them
said, "If we had hundreds of Tanks we could finish the
war. A dozen or two are no good. A score or two are
no good. We want hundreds to smash down the German
wire, to stamp out their machine-guns, and walk through
their strong points." Some of his comrades laughed at him
as a wild enthusiast on Tanks, and elsewhere there was for
a time a sense of disappointment in the achievements of
these things.

They had bad luck. Five times out of six the ground
was very difficult for them. Here and there, as in the
fighting on the Scarpe after Arras, and even up in Flanders
in the worst of weather, they did wonderful things, attack-
ing and destroying blockhouses, routing out machine-gun
nests, saving the lives of the infantry, but more of their
bodies lay about the battlefields, and they were never in
numbers enough to do the big thing which they seemed to
promise on that first day of revelation. Now, in this
battle round Cambrai they did the big thing, for on that
day of November 20 it was their number and the skill and
courage of their crews that made the gaps through the
German wire and opened the way across the Hindenburg
lines for infantry and cavalry, and afterwards routed out
German machine-gunners who still defended their posi-
tions. Ever since that day of surprise they have been
fighting — in the attacks on Bourlon Wood and Bourlon

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 127

village and Fontaine-Notre-Dame, and in the counter-at-
tacks against Gouzeaucourt and Gonnelieu which followed
the enemy's terrific onslaught to retake his lost ground.

I have told some of the adventures of the Tank crews,
but there are others to tell, and worth the telling, because
these men have shown a daring and a courage and endur-
ance which is more marvellous the more one knows of
their difficulties and their dangers and their utter exhaustion
of body when only their spirit was unbeaten. After the
third day of battle I saw some of them coming home, and
they had been in action for many hours of those days
before they crawled back to this lair, where the dark forms
of their machines looked very beast-like among their camp-
fires, which flickered with a ruddy glare on their mud-
cased flanks, so that it seemed a, nightmare to me, with the
flash of shell-fire etching the outlines of the t,rees about
them. One Tank was in action continuously, driving and
fighting, for sixty-four hours — and when one knows, as I
know, what a frightful physical strain it is on the crew,
boxed up in that narrow space, jammed up against their
engine, deafened by the noise of their own gun-fire, shaken
and banged over rough ground, and surrounded by hostile
troops and guns, it seems astounding that men could endure
this so long.

One young officer of the Tanks, one of those second-lieu-
tenants of ours who have done so many heroic things in
this war, was 400 yards ahead of the infantry when he
reached the German trenches, and for an hour and a half
after reaching that position his Tank was lashed by
machine-gun fire so that one gunner was seriously wounded,
and it was difficult to work the port-gun owing to splinters.
At half -past ten that morning the Tank was hit direct
by a field-gun shell from a battery near Flesquieres, which
smashed up some of the machinery and put it out of action.
But the Tank pilot and his crew were not put out of action.
They got out of the disabled machine, dismounted their
Lewis guns, and brought them into action from an old Ger-

188 THE WAY TO VICTORY

man communication trench, firing on the enemy who were
still holding the village of Flesquieres.

Other Tanks came up to the attack under fire of a field-
gun worked, as we know now, by a German major, and the
second-lieutenant of the disabled Tank directed them to a
nest of machine-guns which were holding up our Seaforths.
Afterwards he climbed on to the back of his own Tank so
as to get a better field of fire for his Lewis gun. His crew
remained in action with him, and when all their guns had
become red-hot and jammed, and all their ammunition was
exhausted, their officer withdrew them about twenty yards
further back where the Scots were holding their line at the
time, and this young pilot of Tanks took over the command
of a company of these men as their captain was killed soon
after his arrival, and remained with them until relieved by
another officer. That episode reveals the high quality of
courage of the young men who take our Tanks into action,
but every day for a fortnight has been notable in the his-
tory of the Tanks for acts of gallant and good service.

In the attack on Graincourt village several Tanks were
checked by the direct fire of two light field-guns which the
enemy had brought forward, while the infantry were held
up in the face of deadly machine-gun fire from the streets
of Graincourt. Two Tanks worked round the village on
each side, stamped out the machine-guns, and captured the
field-guns so that the infantry could advance and take
possession of the place.

In the attacks on Bourlon Wood the Tanks advanced
ahead of the infantry, destroying the enemy's machine-gun
emplacements on the outskirts of Bourlon village, and after-
wards, when part of this wood had been lost owing to the
enemy's violent counter-attacks, they went inside the forest,
fighting large bodies of German troops who tried to put
them out of action by rifle and machine-gun fire. Many of
these men were killed by the Tanks, who remained in the
forest for four hours until darkness closed in upon them.

It was a squadron of six Tanks that led the way into

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 129

Anneux after a cavalry reconnaissance, and, after a long
fight with enemy machine-gunners hidden in the northern
edge of the village, cleared the way for the infantry. Many
times during these actions the Tank pilots and crews had to
get out under heavy fire to get their bearings, or to get
going after being ditched, and more than one pilot and man
went on driving and fighting after they had been wounded.
In the counter-attacks of the last few days the Tanks ad-
vanced upon the enemy without any advantage of sur-
prise, and under the fire of field-guns laid against them at
short range, and in these actions they have again proved
their quality as fighting engines and fighting men.

They are a little sensitive, these young men, to the comic
descriptions we used to give of them when they were first
seen, and when our words had to camouflage their real
shape and structure. "Look here," said one of their of-
ficers; "don't go calling the Tanks obscene monsters or
ichthyosauri or pre-historic toads. It seems to make a joke
of what, after all, is no joke."

And I believe the commander of the Tanks Corps is
anxious that it should be known that in his order of the
day before battle he did not ask in a literal way that every
Tank should do its damnedest — that was a breezy inter-
pretation of his words — but, rather, pointed out more
solemnly the greatness and honour of the task that lay ahead
of them.

Let us take the Tanks seriously, for inside their steel
walls are the bodies and souls of men who are going out
into battle with no light-heartedness, for it is a grim and
deadly business, but with ideals of duty and endeavour
which lead them to stern and terrible adventures, to enor-
mous fatigues of body and spirit, and to many ugly places
where, unless they have luck, they may be ditched for ever.

ISO THE WAY TO VICTORY

VIII

The Heroes of the Twenty-Ninth Division

December 8
In shreds and patches, with things I have seen and things I
have heard, I have tried from day to day to give something
like a clear narrative of a thrilling chapter of history follow-
ing the German assault on our lines on November 30, ten
days after Sir Julian Byng's victory. There is still much
to tell, and still here and there things that are obscure, be-
cause no one man and no one group of men knows exactly
everything that happened during the hours when the Ger-
mans were inside our advanced lines, and small bodies of
British soldiers were fighting separate and isolated actions,
and other companies, led by brigadier-generals, regimental
officers, or any one who had at that moment the gift of
leadership and a passion of courage did acts of surpassing
gallantry to check the enemy's advance and save us from
disaster. I suppose all those adventures will never be told,
but every day I hear more of them. I hear them in strange
places, as, not many hours ago, when, in the tumult of
war's traffic close to the lines, a friend of mine got off his
horse and told me how he had gone into action on the after-
noon, broke through the Germans with a little body of cav-
alry, who galloped ten miles and then pushed patrols to
Villers-Guislan, which was in the hands of the enemy. As
they went over the ridge the enemy saw them and put
shrapnel over them, but the leading patrol went on until it
came under close machine-gun fire, and a very gallant of-
ficer fell off his horse with a bullet through his badge, and
other men fell.

"They were 'grass cutting,' " said one of these officers,
speaking of German machine-gunners, "and their shooting
was fine." This patrol of cavalry went on, and got their

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 131

hotchkiss guns into action against 800 of the enemy, who
debouched from the sunken road.

'They thought the whole British Army was on them,"
said the cavalry officer, "but there were only thirty of us,
and we laughed when we saw 'em do a bunk, leaving some
of their dead behind."

While I was listening to this tale guns were firing over
the ridge ahead of us, and a German aeroplane was hover-
ing above watching our movement of men and horses, and
"Archies" were shooting hard, and at the same time, not
far away, a band was playing "The Wearin' o' the Green,"
and close to me an Indian soldier was chaunting the
"Koran" to a number of other soldiers of his race squat-
ting around him. It is all like a fantastic nightmare this
war of ours, but in such scenes as this one hears the truth
of great realities, straight simple stories of battle and of
heroic things in the midst of tragedy and sometimes of
men's weakness.

Here in this message I will write more fully than I have
done yet of the things that happened on November 30, and
the days that followed, as I have gathered them, not only
in a haphazard way, but from sources which admit of no
doubt or error in their details. To know what happened,
first one must understand that the right wing of our Cam-
brai salient was held very thinly by battalions of the 55th
Division who had mostly done some hard fighting already.
I have given an account of what took place on the extreme
right, and it helps to explain things elsewhere. The night
before November 30 the Germans fired a large number of
poison-gas shells into our villages of Ronssoy and Lempire
and their neighbourhood, and officers reported that the
"enemy is making faces at us." Then at dawn they put a
violent bombardment on to the front lines. They were
lines held to a certain extent by blocks of men at intervals,
with gaps between, and the enemy, advancing suddenly in
waves, penetrated simultaneously at several points on a

132 THE WAY TO VICTORY

sector of front where many were overwhelmed and sur-
rounded.

But other bodies of our men, Lancashire men of the 55th
Division, including the King's Liverpools and the Liverpool
Scottish, were refusing ground to the enemy, and put up a
grim fight all day, which saved our extreme right from be-
ing turned. One unit fell back in good order to three posts
in its rear, and another unit held on to two positions west
and south of Vendhuille. From one of these they coun-
ter-attacked the enemy's left, and beat it back by furious
fighting, and although they had set out of a narrow quarry,
into which the enemy flung his shells, they defended the
posts behind, and would not let the enemy pass all that day
or all the next. Meanwhile the enemy had forced in the
centre of our line, and was advancing on Villers-Guislan
and Gouzeaucourt. But the gallant King's Liverpools
stopped him abruptly south of Villers-Guislan by stubborn
fighting round Vaucelette Farm and the beet factory on
the road from Peizieres. They met the enemy in the open
with rifle-fire and bayonets, flung him back from the beet-
root factory each time he tried to advance, and balked his
desperate efforts to get the farm. So was our right saved
by these men.

The centre had for a time been bent in, and exciting
things were happening up by Villers-Guislan and Gouzeau-
court, which had seemed to us so secure and remote from
front-line perils until breakfast-time on that black Friday.
Near Villers-Guislan a general had his headquarters. He
had gone there after a visit to some other headquarters
further south, and he was sleeping in his pyjamas when
suddenly he was startled by the noise of rifle shots and
machine-gunning. He rushed out and saw the enemy ad-
vancing close, with open country before them. The gen-
eral shouted to his orderlies and cooks and signallers, and
other groups of men who were near his quarters. Collect-
ing a small party of them who were able to seize their rifles,
and still in pyjamas, he led them out to hold up the enemy's

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 133

outposts. Every man except himself was killed, but he
rallied more men, seventy of them, including a number of
American railwaymen, and dragged up one field-gun, which
he got into action at close range and fired with such deadly
effect that the enemy retreated iooo yards before getting
up supports.

At Gouzeaucourt similar scenes were taking place. I
have described some of them before, but I have now fuller
knowledge of what happened. A general and his staff —
of the 29th Division — were in the headquarters in a quarry,
up the slope to the west of the village. In the village itself
was a dressing-station among the ruins, with pioneers, la-
bour parties, and other odd units. Outside the village were
American and Canadian railway men, with their engines
and truck trains bringing up rations. Early in the morn-
ing the enemy began shelling round the quarry, and the
gunner-general was badly hit in the knee. Thirty big shells
fell very close, and at 8.45 rifle-fire was suddenly heard at
close range from Villers-Guislan. A staff-officer went up
the steps of the dug-out in the quarry and came down to
report to the general that the Germans were advancing
over the ridge. The general was perfectly calm, as all who
know this gallant and knightly man may well imagine.
From among signallers, runners, and servants he collected
a number of men who could use their rifles, and sent them
up to the ridge as a covering party, then ordered the rest
of the personnel, including dispatch riders, to retire to
Gouzeaucourt. The Germans were quite close to his head-
quarters now, but, as his officers tell me, he showed no kind
of hurry as far as his own safety was involved, and at last
walked very quietly with his A.D.C. and other officers out
of the quarry. They had to run the gauntlet of a 5.9 bar-
rage and rifle fire at 400 yards, but the general walked with
his head erect, and with his usual quiet dignity. They
had to go down the slope and up again to Gouzeaucourt,
and at the bottom of the slope was a railway engine and
trucks, halted on the level-crossing. This caused delay, and

1S4 THE WAY TO VICTORY

held up the dispatch-riders so that several of them were
killed, but the general and his staff passed through safely
when the engine was shunted back, and afterwards got away
from Gouzeaucourt before the enemy came in.

I have described the scene round the dressing-station
when the staff was awakened by shots, and one of them ran
from his bath with a towel round his body, but the end of
the story has not yet been told. When the Germans came
in they were not in great numbers for some time, and took
no violent measures against their prisoners. The hospital
staff was allowed to go on working, a few wounded being
brought to them, and a sentry was put over the entrance
to their dug-outs. He seemed a nice fellow, that young
Fritz who walked up and down with fixed bayonet, so nice
that the doctors felt sorry for him on such a cold morning,
and sent up word to say they would be glad to give him a
cup of tea, fresh made and piping hot. So there was no
sentry on the door, and one by one the orderlies and others
went through that door and away to liberty again, if they
had the luck to dodge the German riflemen among the ruins.

At this time three visitors came to Gouzeaucourt and
were surprised by what they found — in fact, they had been
surprised for some time past. They were three R.A.M.C.
men off duty, who had borrowed a car and set off as tour-
ists to see the battle-fields. They got as far as Graincourt
when they heard bullets whistling about them. "Very care-
less," they thought. "Our Tommies should really not shoot
so wildly all over the place." "Silly asses !" they said, when
one of them was hit through the hat. They turned the
car about and came to Gouzeaucourt, and on the road were
amazed to see a German gunner with a light field-gun.
The driver was not an R.A.M.C. man, but he had no weapon
of offence except his motor-car, so he ran over the enemy
and hurt him badly. The first impulse of these R.A.M.C.
men was to render first aid, but the bullets whizzing past
their heads checked philanthropy, and they drove away at
a pace exceeding the speed limit. That story has an ele-

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 135

ment of comedy in it, but there is only tragedy and heroism
in what I have now to tell — the heroism of those men of
the glorious 29th Division who defended Masnieres and
Marcoing until many of them were dead and wounded, and
who, by very great valour and self-sacrifice in dreadful
hours, stopped by their own bodies the full tide of the Ger-
man onrush. The 86th Brigade of the 29th Division were
then holding Masnieres, with the Middlesex Regiment on
the right and the Lancashire Fusiliers on the left. In sup-
port at the sugar factory, east of the village, were the Royal
Fusiliers, and the Guernsey Light Infantry were in the vil-
lage itself as supporting troops. The 87th Brigade of this
Division were holding the Cambrai road from the Cha-
teau Talmas to the north of Marcoing, with the Inniskill-
ings on the right, the Border Regiment on the left, and
the South Wales Borderers in support. The King's Own
Scottish Borderers and the 88th Brigade were in divisional
reserve in Marcoing.

At five o'clock on the morning of November 30 a gun-
ner officer reported that his batteries had been heavily
shelled during the night, and all the troops were ordered to
be on the alert, and the Royal Fusiliers and Guernsey Light
Infantry stood to at alarm posts and in the catacombs be-
low Masnieres. The enemy shelled our lines, and at eight
o'clock, in spite of the mist, observers saw his men moving
at Crevecceur. It was not till forty minutes afterwards that
the enemy were reported advancing, and some of our men
falling back under their pressure of overwhelming num-
bers, so that their wave of field-grey men were flowing up
close to Masnieres and Marcoing. Two companies of the
Guernseys were sent across the canal to make a defensive
flank at Les Rues Vertes, the southern suburb of Mas-
nieres, while the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers and the 16th Mid-
dlesex attacked. It was when the enemy had already
thrust into these streets that a certain staff captain came to
lead the defence, with such a flame of passion in him that
he fired all the men in his company. He is not a very

136 THE WAY TO VICTORY

young man, like so many officers, but of middle age, and
he has a little daughter at home hurt by German bombs,
so that this memory does not make him like his enemy.
He happened to be at the headquarters south of Marcoing
that morning, and when he went up to a dump saw Germans
standing guard over it. He killed one of these men with
a blow from his walking-stick, and put the others to flight.
Then, seeing the situation, he collected his servants, sig-
nallers and runners, and, followed by two companies of
Guernsey Light Infantry, chased the enemy out of Les
Rues Vertes, where many were killed in house-to-house
fighting. Masnieres was then all clear of the enemy except
for a machine-gun which was causing casualties among our
men. The staff captain had already had four orderlies
killed beside him, but now, with another, he rushed the
gun. The fifth orderly was also killed, but with a revolver
in each hand the officer shot the crew of eight Germans.
Then he collected more men as new outposts of the enemy
forced their way into Les Rues Vertes, and again he cleared
the village of them after fierce fighting. By this time the
staff captain had been wounded in the leg, but he remained
on duty till the following morning, when he moved into
Marcoing. By his heroic conduct this officer saved a whole
brigade, if not a division.

Meanwhile the ist Lancashire Fusiliers and 16th Middle-
sex were beating back heavy attacks, three times repeated,
between Rumilly and the Cambrai road, and the enemy was
never able to come nearer than ioo yards, and was repulsed
with great slaughter by machine-gun, trench-mortar, and
rifle-fire. In a sunken road south of Masnieres where the
enemy kept assembling, there was a massacre of Germans
under trench-mortar fire commanded by an officer who fired
some 300 shells into that ditch. Many of them had been
killed earlier in the morning in that neighbourhood south
of Masnieres by an officer of artillery and his gunners, who
found themselves isolated and in advance of our infantry,
with the enemy advancing in waves over the ridge of Creve-

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 137

coeur. For an hour and a half he kept his guns in action,
firing at close range with open sights on the German storm
troops, on the cavalry crossing over the canal bridges in
column of route, and on all German traffic of assault, so
that his gunners never had such targets and inflicted fright-
ful casualties. But they could not stop the tide of men
and horses and guns, and at last, when the foremost waves
were close upon him, the officer ordered his men — fifty of
them were casualties — to retire with their breach-locks and
abandon the guns.

In Masnieres and Marcoing dusk crept down the broken
streets, but still the enemy attacked. At four o'clock he
attacked Masnieres on three sides, but was beaten off. At
ten minutes past five he made another effort against Les
Rues Vertes, but was again repulsed with slaughter. Then
he opened a terrible bombardment from three sides, and it
was clear to the officer commanding these men at Masnieres
that he could hardly hold out twenty-four hours, owing to
the exhaustion and casualties of his men, who were hun-
gry and tired, but with no thought of surrender.

The officer commanding the trench-mortars had ex-
hausted all his ammunition and was severely wounded, and
at this time the German 77's were firing from three sides
and enfilading our men severely. The trench-mortars were
destroyed, and an officer led a party of infantry to beat
off another attack on Les Rues Vertes, while orders were
issued for all the men to hold on at all costs. They held.

Not an inch of ground had been lost by the heroic bat-
talions of Guernseys, Middlesex men, and Lancashire
Fusiliers when night came on. By this time they had re-
ceived more ammunition from a brigade transport officer,
who arrived with pack-mules in Masnieres after a perilous
journey under fire.

That night the 16th Middlesex, the old "Die-hards/' who
had fought all through the day, repelling attack after at-
tack as the enemy tried to force the passage of the canal,
had only weak forces left, and still expected frc

138 THE WAY TO VICTORY

upon them as soon as the sky should lighten for another
dawn.

A colonel was the hero of the defence. In the morning,
with the staff of his battalion headquarters, those orderlies
and signallers who went into the fighting-line that day in
any part of the field, he held the lock over the canal south
of the sugar factory at Masnieres — which the enemy tried
to force by bloody fighting — until he was relieved by the
Royal Fusiliers, and then directed the defence of his bat-
talion of Middlesex with a courage that his officers and
men cannot praise too much. A bullet struck him in the
right eye, and wounded him so badly that for a time he
was blind in both eyes, with a bandage over them. But
this officer, the brother of Forbes-Robertson, who once
played in The Light that Failed, did not relinquish his com-
mand nor show any dimming of that spirit which was like
a light among his men. He told an orderly to lead him by
the hand to the front line held by his men, and so guided
he found his way to them, and spoke fine thrilling words to
them, so that they were greatly encouraged to fight on.
Then he got into touch with the men of the Hampshire
Regiment and South Wales Borderers, who were on his
right, and told them that his men were still holding their
line so that the situation might yet be saved. The night
passed, and at 7.15 next morning there was a heavy bom-
bardment, followed by an attack in eight waves by Ger-
man infantry on the north side of the canal, where they
drove in the outpost established in Mon Plaisir Farm, 700
yards from the canal lock below the sugar factory, and
they were beaten back elsewhere with severe losses.

In the sugar factory were four of our machine-guns, and
as the dense lines of Germans tried to force the passage of
the canal to Les Rues Vertes they were swept by the fire
of these weapons, and 500 of them were drowned at this
point in the canal. All day long the German Red Cross
were busy in this neighbourhood rescuing their wounded.
... At ten o'clock the enemy were reported advancing in

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 139

rushes in the neighbourhood of Mon Plaisir, and at that
time two German areoplanes flew over Masnieres and
dropped red lights, and there followed an intense bombard-
ment for an hour and a quarter, so that from the roof of
the chateau where the general stood nothing could be seen
but red dust, and all the town was wrecked.

Tire general left the chateau when the enemy was on the
canal bridge and had rushed the streets of Les Rues Vertes.
He went along the canal bank, and found that for the first
time the men were shaken, and were firing wildly without
full effect. He spoke to them in words used by an Amer-
ican general long ago in history : "Do not fire until you
see the whites of your enemy's eyes.,,

The men remained calm, and a platoon were sent to hold
the lock bridge. An officer organized a bridgehead de-
fence, and, with his orderly and six men, beat back the
enemy, taking five of them prisoners on our side of the
canal. This officer fired all his revolver ammunition, and
then took a German rifle and went after the enemy. All
round this bridgehead there was savage fighting by bomb-
ing parties, and in the melee it was difficult to distinguish
friend from foe, but eighty prisoners were captured among
300 who attacked with machine-guns.

South of Les Rues Vertes other bodies of our troops,
including the South Wales Borderers and King's Own
Scottish Borderers, held the gap on the right, and fought
very fiercely to clear the enemy out of the sunken roads
running south of Masnieres and Marcoing, and to hold up
the hostile tide which was flowing westwards.

At 7.30 on the night of December 1, a staff officer made
his way into Masnieres, and arranged the details for a with-
drawal from that town, which was held by exhausted, fam-
ished men, with many wounded in cellars, and groups of
prisoners brought in during the day. Every cellar was
searched, and the prisoners voluntarily helped to carry the
wounded out on doors and boards, so that not one was left
behind. All papers were destroyed, and all the ammuni-

140 THE WAY TO VICTORY

tion which could not be carried away was destroyed. Noth-
ing of any value to the enemy remained, and all this was
done without sound, in dead silence. The bridgehead de-
fences were withdrawn last, and Masnieres was left so
quietly that for many hours next day the enemy bombarded
it, believing our troops to be still there. On December 3
the enemy's pressure increased round Marcoing, and there
was heavy fighting in the peninsula in the northern bend of
the canal, and south of that. Then our men left Marcoing,
and the last man in the town was a brigadier, who went
through its deserted streets at night and did not meet a sin-
gle living man, though many dead. An officer of the
Headquarters Staff remained at the bridgehead and blew it
up, and on Tuesday, December 4, our organized retire-
ment was made to our present line of defence.

Our withdrawal on the left by Mceuvres and the line
coming down from Bourlon Wood to the Canal du Nord
was made after a gallant bit of work by our men of the
2nd Division in this difficult part of the line, under con-
stant fire, when they actually pushed forward their line
closer to Bourlon village, so denying the enemy observa-
tion of our ground south and south-east. In doing so they
came across two 3-inch guns and two field-guns abandoned
by the enemy after his repulse on November 30, and these
were blown up by our men. On the canal bank we had a
forward post from which we could enfilade the enemy in
Bourlon village with machine-gun fire, and on the day of
his big attack, which failed so disastrously for him on this
northern side of the salient, even our wounded men begged
to stay in order not to miss their share in repulsing the
enemy. They were paying him back for many things suf-
fered. In those Hindenburg lines near Mceuvres our men
had suffered under fierce shell-fire, and on the canal bank
they had been bombed and trench-mortared, and on the
left of Mceuvres and in and out of the village there had
been long and bloody fighting. Before the organized with-
drawal from this battle-ground the dug-outs with which

THE BATTLES OF THE CAMBRAI SALIENT 141

the ground was honey-combed were blown up, and all ma-
terial was removed. It was a point of honour with each
man to bring away as much as he could carry, and they
staggered back in the darkness under monstrous voluntary
loads. Since then, on our new line of defence, there have
been very few casualties, and there is at least this compensa-
tion for the loss of some ground — that it means a great
saving of life, and gives us strong defensive positions which
the enemy can only attack at high cost to himself.

PART II
THE APPROACHING MENACE

I

The Peace of the Snow

January 8, 191 8
There is a blizzard of snow on the Western Front, and
the melting ice of yesterday has hardened again and is cov-
ered deep. It is as heavy a snowstorm as I have seen since
the winter of 1914 in France, and there is a wild wind,
which comes moaning and whining across the fields with a
ghostly plaint, crying round the gables of old houses and
wailing through the bare trees, which are all white again.
It is sweeping the surface of the snow-fields with invisible
brooms as though white witches were dancing there and
raising a whirl of flakes in their mad mazurka. Every
now and then the wind flings itself with a shriek against
the doors of the barns or the warped windows of one old
chateau I know, where a number of officers are as snow-
bound as if they were in winter quarters on the Island of
Kerguelen, and all the bolts are rattled as though some
angry spirit wanted to come in where they sit round a log
fire, saying "What a life!" after long intervals of silence
and unutterable thoughts. Outside the snow has drifted
across the roads, and a flurry of flakes is following the
dispatch-riders, who must get somehow between one head-
quarters and another. I met one on the road this morn-
ing, and he looked like Father-Christmas in war time, with

143

144 THE WAY TO VICTORY

an ermine mantle on his back and a white crown on his
head, and his dispatch-bag plastered with snow, and every
spoke of his motor-cycle thick with it. A lonely camp he
passed was like a scene in Northern China, or what I should
imagine it to be, and among the snow-covered sheds a num-
ber of Chinese labourers — who, by the oddest freak of fate,
have come to the edge of this Western war — were stand-
ing about snow-clad above their overalls and blankets, smil-
ing in their sphinx-like way into the face of the blizzard.
.Lorry columns went ploughing through the snowdrifts to
the ration dumps, and soldiers became snow-sweepers to
clear the way of the roads, and liked their job so that they
were whistling to the tune of the wind which whipped the
blood to their cheeks.

There is not much war in progress except in the air,
where on both sides planes are out trying to get photographs
of the enemy's lines, because, though the snow hides some
things, it tells many secrets where it has melted above the
dug-outs, and where tracks of feet go up to certain places,
and where guns have been hidden by artful camouflage.
So up in the air war goes on, where our flying fellows find
it hard to get the touch of their machine-guns because an,
ungloved hand is like a block of ice, but where every day
they challenge the enemy to single combat or squadron en-
counters, and lately have had the luck to drive many of
them down. Broken aeroplanes look like dead blackbirds
on the snow-fields as I saw them a year ago on the Somme
battlefields, before the German retreat.

On the ground war has called a truce because of the snow,
except for bursts of artillery fire on both sides, as a demon-
stration of the mighty power of destruction which is wait-
ing there on our side and theirs for the call to battle when
the spring comes. But this new fall of snow means a
longer respite. Nature has arranged an armistice in her
white palace of peace, and the fighting men are standing to
and waiting with their rifles ready, but inactive. For a
time the war seems to have passed out of the hands of the

THE APPROACHING MENACE 145

armies into those of the statesmen, and powers are at work
greater than high explosives, if ideas and the psychology
of nations and the stress of peoples have any force in the
decisions of destiny. Out here the armies in the field are
waiting for those decisions which one way or the other will
hold the fate of thousands of men. The newspapers that
come out to the dug-outs and the billets, and the wireless
that gives the first clue of what is being said by our states-
men and the enemy's, provide the conversation which goes
on during the day and night wherever two soldiers have a
chance to talk, or the thoughts that go round and round
the men's heads when they are alone and silent.

The armies never say a word outside those private con-
versations in holes in the ground and in draughty barns,
where they sleep on straw, or in the billets behind the lines.
They are as silent as death in the great world-discussion
of war aims and peace terms, although it is their lives which
hang in the balance and their courage which will win what-
ever is won. They are without expression but not with-
out interest in this crisis of thought which has come out
of the agonies of great peoples and great armies, and so,
while there is a quiet time in the snow, the souls of many
thousands of men are filled with the drama of the head-
lines in the papers of the day before yesterday, and in their
hearts is the question : "What shall we read the day after
to-morrow?"

Is it not natural that they should be more eager for
news than the people who get their papers at the breakfast
tables at home? For the headlines that will be printed
during the next few weeks will tell the men what battles
must be fought by them, when the snow melts and the
thaw dries, or what has been won or what lost by all they
— these fighting men of ours — have done and suffered.

January io
In spite of a thaw last night, after another heavy bliz-
zard, we are still deep in snow on this Western Front, and

146 THE WAY TO VICTORY

all the battle-fields are under a white shroud, so that their
familiar landmarks, their rags and tatters of ruin, their
old trenches, and new wire, their unexploded shells, and
all their shell-craters, are covered up and made smooth as
a bed of down. They are strangely and uncannily quiet
in most part of the line, for the hush of the snow seems to
have fallen on the war, and even the guns are silent in most
sectors, because there is poor visibility for observation
posts or aeroplanes through the whirl of flakes.

This spell of silence was broken two mornings ago, east
of Bullecourt, by the sudden hostile attack reported by the
Commander-in-Chief, which was something more than a
raid, though not on a big scale. The enemy bombarded
our trenches before the light of day with high explosives
and gas, and at about half-past six three parties of Bava-
rians, who had been lying out in No Man's Land, advanced
on our front line, from which some of our men no doubt
had been withdrawn from the immediate area of shell-fire,
which came as a creeping barrage before the attack. Two
of the enemy parties were carrying flammenwerfer, those
flame-jet machines which take two men to work and send
out a thirty-foot flame as fierce as a bunsen burner — a long
scarlet tongue of fire which licks up the life of a man at
one touch. It is a terrifying thing to men who see it for
the first time or who have not been trained how to avoid
its menace, but most of our men have seen demonstrations
of it and know how to deal with it. In this case our front
line near Bullecourt was for a time entered, and the Bava-
rians used our trench as cover from the white nakedness
of No Man's Land. An immediate counter-attack killed
some of them, but the others stayed on until the middle of
the morning. At half-past eleven it was snowing hard,
and the footsteps of the men who had come across No
Man's Land were filled up and blotted out. f Some red
splodges in front of our wire were made white again.
Through the heavy snowflakes our second counter-attack
was delivered, and this time the Bavarians were turned out

THE APPROACHING MENACE 147

of the ground in which they had been unwelcome visitors.
Nearly a score of unwounded men remained in our hands
and a few wounded. It was a foolish adventure as far as
the enemy was concerned, and designed by some battalion
commander to win the favour of Headquarters at the ex-
pense of his men's lives. This, and a few small raids on
each side, are the only interruptions of the quietude of the
infantry in their snow-bound trenches.

Yesterday I went to see the battlefields round Lens
under the snow, and was startled by the deathly silence of
them and the white peace of them. Only very rarely there
was the sullen bark of a gun, short and gruff in the still
air, and there was no sign of life, no look of life, in that
mining city whose broken roofs were all white under the
snow, or in the suburbs of Lievin, where our men live, or
in the German lines which stretch away from Sallaumines.
The old trenches on the way to them were filled with snow,
and the fields where thousands of men have fought and
died, French as well as English, were white and glisten-
ing, and all their litter of destruction was hidden. It was
difficult going, for the slopes were covered with ice, and
one slipped and fell a score of times, and having slid down
into an old trench it was absurdly hard to get on the other
side. The snow had camouflaged the shell-craters, which
were filled with ice, so that what looked like solid ground
was a covered hole into which one fell deep. Below the
snow were the white bones of men, French soldier boys who
died on this ground three years ago, and the old barbed
wire which had guarded their front line, the broken strands
of it, was thickly furred with frost.

The ruins behind our lines look more romantic under
snow than when their bricks are bare and their broken
rafters are black. Arras, into which I went yesterday, is
as beautiful as a dream-picture, with a cold, white sadness
in its desolate and destroyed streets. The snow takes
away some of the brutality of its mutilation, and all its
broken houses and shell-pierced roofs, and the stone carv-

148 THE WAY TO VICTORY

ings on buildings which once belonged to the glory of the
French Renaissance are haunting in their effect upon one's
vision with this whiteness on them. Arras is like a stage-
picture of war in a mediaeval city, and the few soldiers who
pass down its lonely ways seem to belong to that old-world
scene, for in their hairy coats — their stink-coats as they
call them — and in their steel hats to which the snowflakes
cling, they might be the English men-at-arms who fought
with King Harry at Agincourt 500 years ago. Through
the snow-storm yesterday our men went up to the lines,
with a scrunch of feet on the soft tracks and the whirling
flakes so thick about them that they were like white ghosts.
Gunners brought long teams of mules down to the wagon-
lines. The poor beasts looked very cold, and each man
bent his head sideways to the blizzard, and the breast of
his leather tunic was thickly covered as though with fleece,
and there was a wreath of snow about the rim of his steel
hat. These are the white pictures of our winter warfare,
and they are worth describing, because they hold the drama
of a million men's lives.

January 13
It is six weeks since the German counter-attacks at Cam-
brai, two months since our capture of Passchendaele, and
the lines have been quiet since then under the heavy snow,
except for bursts of gun-fire and night raids, and that
flame assault last week. Even in the line the tumult of the
fighting months has died down into quiet days and nights,
with only odd moments of savage shelling as a reminder
that the devil is not yet dead, so that our men up there
have not too bad a time. Some of them I know — those
Gordons of whom I have given glimpses up and down the
roads of war — had quite a good time on Hogmanay night
within 400 yards of the enemy. They sent me an invita-
tion, but I had not the luck to be there, and it was one of
their officers who described the scene to me. In some caves
quarried deep below the trenches and lighted with electric

THE APPROACHING MENACE 149

lamps — there was a horrid moment when the engine stopped
working and threatened to plunge them all in darkness —
they had a feast night, and the spirit of Scotland moved
among them and lived in their songs and speeches, with
the memory of gallant comrades who had been with them
a year ago and are no longer with them. The pipers came
into the caves, and their music filled these rocky vaults with
wild sound, very haunting in its call to Scottish hearts; but
it was imprisoned below ground and did not reach the
German lines. The little dim light glowed on the steel
helmets of the Gordons and made fantastic shadows on the
walls as the pipers marched up and down, and shone in
the eyes of the officers and men as they sipped hot rum
punch and felt its warmth in their hearts. Four officers
who had fought through the Somme together — there are
only four now of those who held the lines at Martinpuich
— raised their glasses to each other and toasted the colonel,
who thinks of them from afar, waiting for a wound to heal
in his lung, and yearning to come out again because though
he hates war he loves his battalion. He is the Georgian
gentleman who has appeared as a heroic figure in some of
my sketches, and one day he will reappear and the pipes
will play him back with the march tune of his own clan.

Up in the line there was a pint of hot cocoa every night
dispensed from a Y.M.C.A. dug-out by a great-hearted
soul who once wrote books and plays which all the world
knows, and now finds happiness for a wounded heart in
serving our soldiers in that danger zone. He had to bor-
row a steel hat and a gasbag to go up to a place which he
says smells strongly of hell. But he had no need to borrow
a soldier's courage.

Yesterday I met the Gordons in their billets, and took
tea in their mess with a score or so of officers at a long
table in an old house which stands undamaged in a ruined
town. That was a good picture, not without the romance
of history in it. If I were a painter, instead of a journey-
man of words, I should love to get the colour of it down

150 THE WAY TO VICTORY

on canvas, with the faces of those Scots in the candle-light
and the firelight, in that old brown panelled room, with its
broken bits of gilding and its high-backed chairs. The
officers of the Scottish archers who were the bodyguard
of Louis XI, might have sat in such a room as this in this
very town, and I think the faces of these mediaeval sol-
diers would have been like those I saw round the table
yesterday — clean-cut, brown, and hard, with that steady
look in the eyes which comes to men who have stared into
the face of death.

"What do you think of the prospects?'* I asked honest
John, who has got wisdom in his hard pate.

"We're waiting for the Boche to show his hand," he
said, "and we're ready for him. It seems likely that he
will try to break our lines, but if he couldn't do it before
when he had ten to one, how can he hope to do it now
when it will be man for man and gun for gun? We shall
hold him all right."

That is the faith of all our men. They are not afraid
of this menace of masses of men and guns which may be
brought against us if the enemy's threat is fulfilled. They
are sure of their defensive strength, sure of our artillery,
sure of their own courage, and they believe that however
great the enemy's assault it will be smashed with great
slaughter. So their faith is not shaken, although they
know better than all others that when this year's fighting
begins it will be ferocious. They are waiting for the ene-
my's challenge to the struggle which may decide the fate
of the world. They are waiting now for the arena to be
cleared of snow and for the roads leading up to it to harden
after the thaw that has now set in. For a few days they
looked to the likelihood of some other kind of settlement
by statesmen rather than by soldiers, by ideas rather than
by high expolsives, but now the enemy seems to want war
again instead of peace, and our men are ready to give him
all he wants if it is for slaughter that he asks. If the
enemy presses his challenge on this Western Front I be-

THE APPROACHING MENACE 151

lieve that there will be greater slaughter than there has
ever been in this war, though blood has flowed in rivers.

January 16
The other night I went to the Theatre Royal of the West-
ern Front. Robinson Crusoe was on the bill, as performed
by some of His Majesty's Players, who wear kilts when
they are not in fancy dress, and belong to a division with
whom the enemy is most intimately acquainted.

The Theatre Royal of the Western Front is a famous
and distinguished house, though slightly in need of decora-
tion and repairs owing to the ventilation of its roof by
shell-fire — for these little accidents will happen even in
war time. But it presented a brilliant aspect the other
night, and was quite an historic scene. In the "royal box,"
with its tattered brocade and tarnished gilding, there was a
party of generals and staff officers, and the dress circle was
filled with regimental officers who a week or two ago were
staring at snow scenes in No Man's Land, and saying "A
merry Christmas — I don't think."

The stalls were crowded with men of many battalions,
English, Scottish, and Irish, gunners and engineers and
signallers and machine-gun companies. But what was
most thrilling in the scene was the presence of no fewer
than two ladies in the stage box, sitting on either side of a
gallant officer in his stink-coat, or hairy. They were real
ladies, and not soldiers in disguise, to give an extra touch
of splendour to the scene. For three years and more they
had been living underground, coming up for light and
air between storms of high explosives, but now they had
put on evening dress, and looked like dowager duchesses at
Covent Garden after a robbery of their jewels. It was very
pleasant to have them there, and as they could not under-
stand a word of the performance there was no need for
the funny men to restrain the exuberance of their humour,
which was very convenient. Down below the footlights
the stringed orchestra played delightfully, and a fellow in

152 THE WAY TO VICTORY

the corner with the tenor drums had a number of subsidi-
ary instruments for ragtime effects which thrilled the
house, especially when he made a whole choir of birds sing
to a solo by Robinson Crusoe, with background of palm-
trees and sun-splashed islands, painted by a non-commis-
sioned officer with beauty in his brush.

Robinson Crusoe was a one-pip man who deserves
crossed swords for the amount of pleasure he has given to
great numbers of men by training his company to fight the
enemy of depression. Polly Perkins with her rosebud
mouth and coy ways was as pretty a child as you may find
in any company of kilted men after slight alterations by
the make-up expert, and Mrs. Crusoe, who comes from
Glasgow, with striped stockings and strong accent and a
weakness for unsweetened gin, had a sense of humour
which would bring a smile to the face of a German colonel
in a prisoners' cage — which is not easy.

I am bound to say, however, with due acknowledgments
to two funny sailormen and Man Friday and a young sea-
man with a voice like the west wind in a song by Shelley,
that my fancy was particularly taken by a comedian with
a face of most whimsical variety. He had strange mirth-
provoking gestures, and a sense of life's little ironies in
war time so sharp that it cut the ground beneath one's feet.
He is a man of distinguished family, and has as his crest
four sergeant-majors rampant on a field of as you were.
The audience of soldiers— men just out of the line — roared
with laughter for two hours, and that is as good for them
as a rum ration on a cold night in the trenches, and more
lasting in effect.

After the theatre I went to dinner with the same crowd
that celebrated Hogmanay night in the caves 400 yards
from the German line. They have made me an honorary
member of their mess, and I have had no greater honour.
It was a great dinner. The Germans were 400 yards away
from the pipes on Hogmanay night, and I was only three
inches away when nine tall and proper men with the pipes

THE APPROACHING MENACE 153

flung across their shoulders came marching in and stood be-
hind the long table, where thirty officers sat in the old pan-
elled room. It was stirring music, a little alarming to the
ears at first until a Saxon got quite used to it, but very
glorious, and filled with the heroic spirit of Scotland, with
the haunting memories of many gallant ghosts, and the bad-
ness of old far-off times. The Scottish officers around me,
with the lamplight on their faces and shadows about them
in this room, gave shrill cries and applauded after each
march and each strathspey. Then a glass of whisky was
given to the pipe-major, and he raised it high and wished
good health to his officer in Gaelic, which I can't spell.
After that there were Highland reels, danced to the rip-
pling notes of a clarionet played by an officer who had the
greatest endurance in wind-power of any man I have ever
met. I watched that eightsome with envy because of its
spirit and vitality and joyousness as danced by officers, who
put their souls into it and challenged each other with wild
barbaric cries, and with a shining light in their eyes,
though there was only one candle in the room, and the
panelled walls seemed to recede from us into the shadow-
world.

These men are the fighting men. They are waiting, like
hundreds of thousands more, for the fate of this year to
declare its hand and for new battles to begin. Meanwhile
they are glad of the rest behind the lines, and fill every hour
of it with as much fun as they can grab out of the luck
of life.

II

The Message of Spring

January 31
We are still waiting on the Western Front — waiting for
the spring to come and waiting for orders which in this
new year of war will decide the fate of the world in some
way by blood or by peace. But no direct challenge comes.

154 THE WAY TO VICTORY

The guns, which are the modern heralds of battle, have
not roared out their summons. In the enemy's camp, that
vast camp of Central Europe where the councils of war
are surrounded by people crying for bread and peace, an-
gry now as well as agonized, there seems to be hesitation
and delay, as though the generals were afraid of giving
the word which, if it comes, will hurl the last reserves of
their manhood into the dice-box of this gambler's throw
with fate.

So there is a stand to of our armies in the field. All
along the lines our men are ready and waiting. Their
rifles are on the fire-steps, and their machine-guns are clean.
The gunners will be quick to hear those words, "Prepare
for action!" which come before a battle. But now it is
quiet along the line, and there is only the noise of single
rounds from howitzers shooting at some special target, or
from a long-range gun reaching out to some place far be-
hind the German lines, or a sudden gust of fury from a
battery of field-guns slashing into the silence of the battle-
fields, awaking the slumbering devils of war, and then,
after ten minutes of tumult, obeying the order of "Cease
fire!" from some young officer with two pips on his shoul-
der. So it was along one sector of the Front yesterday.
Not for a year have I known so great a hush over the lines.
I could see the enemy's trenches winding in a white, snaky
way over the slope, and the old city of St.-Quentin, where
he lives in vaults and tunnels. I saw the high walls of the
cathedral scarred by shell-fire, and houses with broken
roofs, and the sunlight caught a glass roof or a window-
pane which, by some freak of luck, had not been smashed,
and made it shine like a flame. On the right one gun fired
with steady strokes that hammered into the silence every
minute to the tick. It was one of our guns, and there was
no answer.

It was all of a sudden that a kind of toy battle opened,
disturbing this quietude by a snapping and barking of
small shells and machine-gun fire. It was when two hos-

THE APPROACHING MENACE 155

tile aeroplanes came overhead and two of ours passed them
in a sky that was blue and cloudless above the mist. One
of our men was the first to declare war. He flew over St-
Ouentin, and a sudden, flat, thudding explosion there was
proof that he had dropped a bomb. He circled back, and
instantly the German Archies opened fire on him, and little
black puffs pursued him as their shrapnel burst. Then the
German planes came out and our Archies flung a barrage in
their way, and our shrapnel dotted the sky with white puff
balls. From the slopes where the German trenches wound
snakily and from folds in the earth on our side of the lines,
where I had seen no sign of life when I passed, there began
a chattering conversation of machine-gun fire. It was like
a duet on kettle-drums. All this fuss travelled down the
lines as the aeroplanes went their way, and it was as though
queer beasts who had been sleeping in the folds of the earth
on this quiet afternoon had been aroused, as the dogs of a
village join in the chorus of yapping when a stranger comes
by. Then it was silent again except for the gun on the
right, which still plugged away every minute to the tick.
There seems no life on the battlefields, no human being in
this solitude, but below ground everywhere there are good
fellows of ours, friends of mine and yours, very much
alive, though hidden in their earth holes. One cannot find
them without a guide unless by accident, but a friendly soul
who knows the ground will suddenly drop down into a ditch
and say, "Let's look in at Brigade Headquarters," or "Let's
see what the Battalion Headquarters can do in the way of
a drink," or "Dear old Charlie is not a hundred yards away
from here." . . . The Brigade Headquarters is glad to see
a visitor from the outer world. The battalion officers are
glad to welcome you in their dug-outs if you have the pass-
word of good-fellowship. "Dear old Charlies" will give
you his philosophy on war and life as it is viewed from the
angle of a hole in the ground, fitted up with deal shelves,
a wire bed, and a wooden bench.

Into such a ditch I went yesterday, and met some very

156 THE WAY TO VICTORY

gallant gentlemen, who make the best out of life below
ground, and remember all the funny stories they heard when
last on leave, and ask for news of London, like men who
have been long shipwrecked on a desert island. These
troglodytes are merry grigs as a rule, with a sense of
irony which finds the weak spots in the armour of the
world's conceit. As truth tellers, hiding nothing and strip-
ping life bare of its wraps and rags, you cannot meet their
like, and out of these trenches and these dug-outs there will
come, I think, a new philosophy. Meanwhile, they are
waiting for the next act in this drama of war, ready to face
it with steady eyes, whatever its frightfulness.

February 8
The hush before the storm. Here and there along our
front for an hour or two of uproar the enemy's guns are
flinging over shell-fire, very fierce and concentrated while
it lasts, and our guns are answering or shooting before the
challenge with the same sudden gusts of fury. But there
is nothing systematic in this. It is not the beginning of
those long bombardments which precede infantry battles
on a wide front after the massing of many batteries. It is
only the harassing fire of winter warfare, and there still
reigns over our battlefields a strange, unearthly silence be-
tween these bouts of shooting. It has seemed to me during
the last few days when I have been up at the Front as
though Nature herself were in suspense waiting and watch-
ing and listening for the beginning of that conflict of men
which is expected before the year grows much older per-
haps before the first crocus thrusts up through the moist
leaves, and before there is the first glint of green in the
woods.

Yesterday it was immensely quiet again along that part
of the line where I happened to be — on the extreme right
where the village of La Fere lies broken in the marshes of
the Oise, below St.-Quentin. We could see the enemy's
country stretching out before us, slope melting into slope

THE APPROACHING MENACE 157

through the mists of the day, and one hill, naked of trees
at the top, stark and bluff against the sky dominating our
own countryside with direct observation. There were
ruined villages on the enemy's side of the line like those on
ours. Somewhere in the folds of earth were his guns, and
nearer to us the hidden emplacements of his machine-guns,
and below ground in their dug-outs his men. A menace
was there and a secret — the menace of death, the secret of
the enemy's plans, but everywhere that strange silence.
Not a gun fired for an hour or more, not a rifle shot. Life
seemed to have gone from this land. Nothing moved. No
bird sang in the thickets. No smoke curled from the chim-
neys of villages still standing behind the German lines.
It was all dead and still. Only the wind stirred in the rank
grass that grows over old wheatfields, and a little tremor
of life in the wet earth and the trees that are waiting for the
spring. In this hush the very wind, soft and warm yester-
day over these battlefields, seemed to hold its breath ex-
pectant of the things that one day soon will break the spell
of silence and shock the sky with noise. Some men of ours
came winding over the grassy track to a pile of old ruins on
a high slope called Fort de Liez, near Barisis. After
their march they sat down in a ditch with their packs against
a broken wall and lit their cigarettes at the journey's end
not far from the enemy.

An officer came and stood by my side and looked over the
enemy's lines. "When is this battle going to begin?" he
asked, by way of opening the conversation. I said, "What
battle? It looks as though the war had ended." "Yes,"
he answered, with a queer smile in his eyes, "I have seen
this sort of thing before; it's what you might call the hush
before the storm."

He was with a company of London men relieving another
crowd. "Write something good about us," said one of
them with a grin, and I said, "I'm always writing some-
thing good about you, because I come from the same old

158 THE WAY TO VICTORY

town, and because you have done as well as we all knew you
would."

"Well, don't forget the London Rangers," said the boy.
Down a long road within gun-fire of the enemy came a
black omnibus with men's rifles and steel hats shining over
the top. It was one of the old London 'buses bringing the
same lads who used to board it at Charing Cross on the way
up to the Bank.

In other places on other days lately I have met men who
ask in a casual sort of way, "When is the fighting going to
begin again?" and then discuss the prospects of the year
with a curious air of aloofness as though they were a
thousand miles away from the fighting lines, though only
less than a gunshot off. Opinions differ from one dug-out
to another. I have heard fairly reasoned arguments as to
the improbability of a great German offensive. 'The enemy
will attack us in several places," say other thoughtful voices
over the wooden tables of the dug-outs. "He is not mass-
ing all these divisions on this front out of mere bluff. He
has enough men to make several subsidiary attacks to his
main thrust, and he will use them and the crowds of guns
behind them. He may count on surprise to roll up the line
quickly. It won't be an old-time offensive anyhow. He
will try for open warfare on a big scale."

"And supposing it fails?" I ask. "Oh, it will fail all
right," comes the answer from a strategist with one pip on
his shoulder, "but it may not be all honey for us." So the
talk goes on from one mess to another all along the lines,
and everywhere these men of ours are trying to look for-
ward into the future, which is not very distant — which may
be only a few days away or a few weeks. But they do not
dwell on these subjects very long, for there are other
things to think and talk about, the small technicalities of
war in the trench ahead of them, the business of wiring
and road-making, the preparations for a new raid, the latest
adventure in the line, or the extra bit of comfort in their
own dug-out. They are pretty comfortable now, some of

THE APPROACHING MENACE 159

our dug-outs in the battlefields, with good tunnels behind
lit by electricity, and many small conveniences for a human
kind of life — enormously better than in the old days of
warfare in the Ypres salient.

"Have a wash," said a friend of mine the other day,
when I arrived in his hole in the ground, and after washing
out of a leather bucket, I noticed how shipshape this little
bedroom was, with shaving tackle and brushes arranged
on a neat dressing-table, and a shelf above the bed for
books of good choice, and a few pictures on the wall to
bring a little colour of life into this small dungeon. Through
a tunnel was the officers' mess, with some' delectable cakes
on the table, and round them a party of good fellows who
made one feel at home. The senior officer brought out a
puppy which had been found as a waif and stray of the
trenches, and I heard of another dog found — though not
here — in the trenches a night or two ago. It was a German
messenger dog, and the message it carried was a warning
to the men, "The colonel is coming."

A young gunner, who had dropped in for tea, was en-
thusiastic about his latest gun-pits, which afterwards he
took me to see. Outside the dug-out was a silent fellow
enjoying the sunset effects above a chalk cutting, and the
silhouettes of a working party with picks and shovels
etched blackly as they passed by on the sky-line. "A quiet
spot," I said. "A good spot," was his answer, "but not
so damned quiet as all that. The Boche got two direct hits
yesterday. Very good shooting."

At night lately there has been a brilliant show of stars,
as the other night when we located our way home by the
pointers of the Great Bear, and presently the whole con-
stellation of the heavens shone out with a million little
lights, and the Milky Way was splashed across their path.

The ruined villages behind the lines were all black with
jagged edges against the pale glamour of this night sky,
except where camp-fires glowed in gutted rooms sheltered
by blanket screens, where our men were having their last

160 THE WAY TO VICTORY

meal of the day, or writing home by candle-light. Some-
times through the shell-holes in standing walls came a glow
of red, as the sky behind was lit by gun-flashes. All along
the line the Very-lights were rising and falling like soap-
bubbles that are blown out of a pipe — bubbles of brilliant
white light, which have fifteen seconds of life, and then go
out. The dead trees of the highways of war, with their
lopped branches and slashed trunks, stand like ghosts in
this fitful darkness, and over all the old battlefields there
are ghosts of memory that steal about one and touch one's
soul with their coldness.

But the air has been warm o' nights, and the wet west
wind of the days has been singing the spring song across
the fields where French peasants, old French women or
young mothers of men are ploughing up the brown earth
for the sowing of another year of life. It is good to see
the glint of the steel plough, for so many fields further
forward are desolate, and nothing moves over them but
flocks of hungry rooks and solitary magpies, and at night
the legions of the battlefield rats.

Snowdrops are out in the woods, and the bosom of the
earth is astir and the sap is rising in the young unslaugh-
tered trees. But our men who watch this changing of the
seasons in this good country of France know that to them
the spring song will be a battle song. They are watching
and waiting, while the days pass quickly and lengthen out
in their hours of light.

February 17
Owing to a hard frost and a bright sun and a keen east
wind which has blown the mists away, visibility has been
good for the past two days, and the airmen on both sides
have been fighting for reconnaissance, and the gunners —
ours and the enemy's — have been firing more heavily than
for several weeks past on various sectors of the Front by
direct or aeroplane observation. The enemy's fire has
been for harassing purposes over a wide extent of country

THE APPROACHING MENACE 161

from Flanders to the Cambrai area. Between six o'clock
and midnight last night he bombarded the ground about
Passchendaele heavily, and his guns were active on Friday
against the Ypres-Staden railway, our line below the Vimy
Ridge, the trenches from Lens to Hulluch, and those south-
west of the Cambrai sector. There is no special significance
in this beyond a good day to kill something, and it gives no
indication of the enemy's intentions, nor is it the beginning
of the great battles which soon must come out of the blue,
or out of the mists, while the year is young.

Yesterday, I was up on the Flanders battlefields, and saw
once again that vast desolation through which our men
fought last year for five months of enormous conflict. The
weather has changed the aspect of it all since I was last
there. The ground, which was a quagmire when our troops
sank up to their waists sometimes if they left the duck-
board tracks on their way to the enemy's "pill-boxes," is
now as hard as iron. All the shell-craters which were
ponds then are now filled with ice. But nothing has
changed the infernal nature of this belt of ground, fifteen
miles long and ten miles deep, which our men gained after
months of most fierce fighting to the crest of Passchendaele,
and the frost has solidified it, as a perpetual reminder of the
enormous conflict of men and guns, which tore and gashed
these slopes of earth, piercing it with millions of craters,
sweeping it bare of life and strewing it with gruesome
wreckage. The frost seems to have petrified it so that the
ridge of each shell-crater is sharp and hard. It is as cold
and barren and dead as the crater-land of the moon. And
there in this dead land were our gunners and our men
guarding it from the enemy, who may wish to come back
to the slopes which he held. They live there below the
frozen ground, have their life there among the shattered
pill-boxes and the old upheaved trenches, and eat and sleep
in this great graveyard of nature and youth. Somewhere
from the fissures of the earth our guns were firing. I could
see the flashes but not the guns. In observation posts

162 THE WAY TO VICTORY

looking out to the enemy's lines, boys of ours, hidden in
muckheaps of frozen earth and rubbish of battle, stared
through field-glasses at the enemy's outposts and watched
the enemy's shelling. There was not much shell-fire, but
crumps were bursting below us, and now and then a big
puff of black shrapnel came into the blue of the sky.

I spoke to a sergeant in one of these places. He had been
in Flanders for fifteen months, and said that he and his
boys had got used to the life. "We used to fret at first,"
he said; "we were always looking for the end, but now it
seems the natural way of life, and we don't think much of
the end, but just settle down and carry on from one day to
the other and make the best of it."

These inhuman places have become humanized by our
men who live in them, and the most abnormal thing on
earth has become normal to them.

"What are the enemy's chances if he attacks?" I said to
this man. "Here?" he asked, and then laughed. "If he
tries to come across here he will catch cold." He did not
mean a cold in the nose.

In Flanders and down by Lens, where I went the day
before, staring into a street of that silent city of the mine
fields, which I have seen on fire with the sweep of battle,
there were no obvious signs of any imminent attack. Apart
from scattered shell-fire and occasional bursts of machine-
gunning, as though literary gentlemen there had sudden
inspirations and were rattling their typewriters at great
speed, or as though demon coffin-makers were spitting out
tacks and hammering them into the planks with rapid
strokes, these old places of death had quietened down, and
one could walk with a sense of safety where until the end
of last year one walked in fear. Enemy planes came into
the sky yesterday over the Passchendaele Ridge, flying high
between our clusters of shrapnel and over the white ruins
of Ypres, clear-cut and dazzling, like rain-washed rocks,
against the cloudless blue, through which the sunlight
streamed. There was the noise of air fighting where our

THE APPROACHING MENACE 163

flying men and the enemy's met and challenged each other
beyond the sight of men on earth.

It was the same old scene of war which I have described
a hundred times, but it was as though the orchestra of the
guns were just tuning up while the actors were rehearsing
behind the scene for another drama of historic tragedy, for
which there has not been time to begin. And that is ex-
actly the truth of things.

February 18
At any moment now we may see the beginning of the
enemy's last and desperate effort to end the war by a de-
cisive victory, for the offensive which he lias been preparing
for months is imminent. In my recent messages I have
described the waiting attitude of oar armies in this tune
of comparative quietude along the lines, and the uncanny
sense one has had of a portentous secret hidden behind the
silence of the enemy's trenches. "What are those beggars
doing there?" asks one man of another, as they stare over
No Man's Land to ruined villages and dark woods where
there is no sign of life. "Up to some dirty work," said
some of them. And they were right. They are not idle
over there, those field-grey men. They are being urged on
to hurried labour, which is part of the secret of their Higher
Command, and these men know that every trench they dig
is a pathway to a battle which will soak the ground with
their blood before many days are past, and that every new
gun-pit they build is one stage further to new fields of
slaughter. Each side has been trying to discover the secret
of the other — the plans to which every bit of work along the
line may give a clue. Each side has been trying to blind
the other's eyes and prevent observation of activity. The
German gunners have a "hate" against our balloons, and
try to shoot them dozun by long-range guns, because in. the
baskets below them are two pairs of watchful eyes noting
the activity of their trains behind the lines, and any move-
ment on the roads. They hate still more our airmen who

164 THE WAY TO VICTORY

every day for many days past have been Hying over the
enemy's lines, spotting their new battle positions, photo-
graphing their new saps, and assembly trenches, and am-
munition dumps, and attacking the enemy's air squadrons
whenever they come out to beat back these observers. They
cannot prevent this work of reconnaissance and there have
been scores of encounters in the air lately in which many
hostile machines have been crashed to earth and brought
down in flames. The enemy has been desperately anxious
to find out our intentions and strength at certain points of
the line, and has attempted many raids to get prisoners and
information. Our raids with the object of getting to the
heart of the secret that lies behind the silence of the lines
have been more successful than his on the whole, and we
have been lucky in getting prisoners who have revealed
much of what we wanted to know.

We know now that the enemy is preparing to attack us
heavily between Arras and St.-Quentin, and that his prepara-
tions are ready, so that we may expect this offensive any
day now that the weather conditions are favourable. It
will not be preceded by days of bombardment nor by a
registration of guns revealing the batteries which he has
brought up secretly under cover of darkness. With a
short and sharp bombardment, the use of gas shells, and of
a number of Tanks he will launch the attack suddenly,
relying upon surprise of time and place, the rapidity and
power of his movement, and the excited enthusiasm of his
troops, whom he lias endeavoured by every kind of spell
and dope" to inspire with a belief that victory and peace
are within their grasp.

The German Higher Command have hurried forward for
political as well as military reasons. The interior condi-
tions of Germany, the sullen spirit that has been crushed
but not killed after the strikes, the attitude of Austria, the
growing pressure of public opinion in the Central Empires
against this last great gamble with the blood of their man-
hood, and the steady growth of the American army in

THE APPROACHING MENACE 165

France, are all factors which are spurring on the German
generals to strike soon in order to gain some showy success
and to silence the cry of the people by the advertisement of
victory. Behind their lines is a terrific industry and a high
nervous tension like that of a nation drugged by hasheesh.
Civilians have been impressed to dig new trenches. New
railways have been built to carry up men and guns and am-
munition. Far behind the lines, eighty miles or more, the
German stosstruppen or storm troops, many of them from
Russia, are being trained in new methods of attack for open
warfare. The depots are crowded with reserves ready to
support the advance waves and -fill up the slaughtered gaps.
The hospitals have been cleared, and many new buildings
have been put up for the reception of the tide of wounded
which will flow back. All leave has been stopped for Ger-
man officers and men, and there is not one among them
who does not know that in a little while he will be Hung
into the furnace fires of another Marne and another Ver-
dun, in which there will be great carnage.

To inspire the German people to hold out a little while
longer, to suppress the spirit of revolt among them so that
the military leaders may make this throw with fate, fan-
tastic stories are being spread about among neutrals and
in their own Press, and by secret word which is carefully
spread broadcast, of new methods of attack which will en-
sure success. Bogeys are faked up and put in circulation.
The German soldier as well as the German people have been
given special treatment for moral. Both of them have
been disappointed too often by promises of victory and
peace to believe in them again without some new tricks. As
long ago as 19 14 they were promised the war would be
over before the leaves of autumn fell. Galicia, Verdun,
the battles of the Isonzo were in turn to give them victories.
The U-boat war was to starve England to surrender by
August last. So now the decisive blow in the West by new
methods of frightfulness is the very latest, and I think the
last, spell that will hold the German people and army to-

166 THE WAY TO VICTORY

gether until it has been tried. The army has been Jiardest
to inspire. Men who went through the blood bath of the
Somme and the horrors of Flanders are not easily duped
as to the ease with which they are expected to smash our
defences. The old methods of attack with the preliminary
bombardment conjure up terrors which they are not willing
to face. So they have been trained to this new form of
secret attack, and their officers have tried to convince them
that they can roll up our lines. It was not easy. While]
many of their officers seem confident that the gamble is
worth trying, the men murmur and have no faith in the
fairy-tale of an easy break through. Kanonenfleisch, say
the men — cannon-fodder.

"How many men are willing to fight to the end?" said
General Ludendorff at Laon to a parade of his troops. One
non-commissioned officer and six men stepped out of the
ranks. I believe that if the first wild onslaught fails, as
our armies are convinced it will fail, the German officers
will find it hard to drive their men to fresh bouts of slaugh-
ter, and the German people zvill cry out in agony for the
cessation of this sacrifice.

At the moment they are drugged and under the spell
of a frightful secret hope. They know that many of the
tales spread among them are false, but pretend to them-
selves that they are credible. They are a nation with blood-
shot eyes and a high temperature of fever, buoyed up by
artificial stimulants to a last period of resistance against
the despair that eats into their hearts. The reaction, if
their hopes fail, will be a wild one. By the grace of all
goodness they will fail. Not only the attacks that are
imminent against ourselves, but the blows that will be
struck against the French will fail if the courage of the
men and the faith of the men, the readiness of great armies,
the power of our guns, and above all the spirit behind the
guns may defend the world from this menace. What-
ever the cost, oar men will not fail, and the prayers of our
people should be with them.

THE APPROACHING MENACE 167

February 20
Although to-day is dull, the last two days have been
wonderfully bright for the time of year, with a blue sky
over the frosted fields, and our airmen have made the most
of visibility by getting out and about across the enemy's
lines, noting the changes there, and watching for any move-
ment on his rails and roads.

It is not often in this war, nor in many places, that one
can see the enemy himself above ground except in actual
battle, for, as a rule, if a man is seen he dies, but two days
ago I had the chance to see many German soldiers behind
their lines, no bigger than ants to the naked eye, but through
one's glasses quite clear and distinct as human creatures,
busy with some purpose of their own. They came winding
down a tract 2000 yards away, on the hill of St.-Gobain,
above the Oise, not knowing, I guess, that they could be
seen from the hummock of earth whither I had crawled
into a hole to look through a squint-box. First came a
column of lorries, and then a body of marching men, and
then a party of cyclists. The track was white in the sun
against the green of the grass, and these men moved very
slowly, like a creeping shadow. It gave me a queer emo-
tion to see them there in their own lines, these field-grey
men, who are hidden as a rule until our own men go for-
ward in attack to rout them out of their holes and ditches
after enormous bombardments. It was as though one saw
the inhabitants of another planet through some monstrous
telescope, and truly these German soldiers are as distant
from us, as strange to us in ideas and purpose, as though
they dwelt beyond the stars. ... At least, while the
trenches divide us the link seems to have snapped between
their human nature and ours. Yet they were less than two
miles away, moving in the same sunlight that cast a
shadow across my hummock of earth.

Behind them, much further away, were the guns which
have no human nature, but which in this war seem to the
infantry like the powers that belong to the Spirit of Evil,

168 THE WAY TO VICTORY

blind in their destruction, careless in theii choice of victims,
ruthless as the old devil gods of the world's first darkness.
It was a quiet day on this part of the line, as on most others
just now in this breathing space before great battles, but
the German guns were sending over some ranging shots
and doing a little target practice against some of our posi-
tions. As I walked towards the knoll from which I could
see the hill track, they sent over some woolly bears — a mix-
ture of high explosive and shrapnel, which burst high up in
the blue as though a bottle of ink had been spilt on a silken
cloth. They spread out like that in a widening smudge,
and were as black as that, but burst so high that they did
no kind of damage.

Down below the little knoll on our side of the lines was
the village of Amigny-Rouy, 500 yards away, and the enemy
pounded it with 5.9's for ten minutes or so, and then ceased
fire, so that with the midday sun on its walls and the
shadow of some fruit-trees etched in a pattern against its
red roofs, it looked a place of slumbering peace. "A cosy-
looking village, that," said a man who came up in the
quietude. "Not so jolly cosy fifteen minutes ago," I
answered, and presently the fraud of this peacefulness was
revealed when the enemy's guns started again, and his
crumps came over with their whining cries, followed by the
gruff cough of their burst down there among the wattled
walls and red-tiled roofs. All the quietude along the
Front is like this. It looks so much like peace that one's
soul might be deceived except by the knowledge that out
of the silence the fury will come again. Our men are not
deceived, however quiet the line, and they are watching
every tiny sign in the enemy's lines, the slightest change in
the shape of a trench or a mound of earth, the daily habits
of the enemy's shell-fire, any unaccustomed movement
which may be detected by sound or sight with vigilant
senses.

"What are the enemy's chances of attack?" I asked. It

THE APPROACHING MENACE 169

was a private soldier, a signaller, who answered in one
grim sentence. "The chance of getting hell," he said.

I think that is the belief of most of our men, not only
in this part of the line, but in others ; and I believe also that
if the enemy persists in his preparations for the offensive
against us, and then drives his men forward, they will pay
a hellish price for any ground they get.

For the first time they will bring up Tanks against us to
break through our wire. They have copied our Tanks and
our method of using them against wired defences. But our
Tank pilots and their commanders smile at this menace,
while accepting the compliment of imitation. "We had to
learn by bitter experience," some of them said to me yester-
day, "and the Germans have got to buy their knowledge in
the same school. We are many battles ahead of them, and
we shall make rings round them with any luck." It is not
boastfulness, but knowledge, that makes them confident.

Yesterday I rode across the fields in a Tank as the sun
was setting, and a big family of Tanks had come home to
tea after their day's work, and were squatting round the
camp with a golden haze about them. They looked inert
and sluggish things, but if the enemy's Tanks come out
against them there will be some deadly work.

The German soldiers must realize the power that lies
behind our lines — a power of which these engines are but
a small unit — and I believe that thousands of men like
those I saw winding down the hill track are filled with hor-
ror at the thought of the slaughter that awaits them if they
are hurled against our strength. But the days are passing,
and their time is drawing near.

Ill

The Long New Line

February 21
It was revealed a few weeks ago that we had taken over
from the French a part of the line round about St.-Quentin,

170 THE WAY TO VICTORY

in order to liberate some of the troops of our Allies for
operations elsewhere. Since then we have been gradually
extending the length of our front on the right of our
armies. This will render a considerable service to the
French, by economizing their man-power at a critical time,
and it is remarkable evidence of our own confidence that,
after the tremendous fighting last year and the departure
of some of our divisions to Italy, wTe should be willing to
lengthen our lines to this extent.

Several times lately I have visited this new part of the
Front, above St.-Quentin to the Oise, and the country that
leads up to it, with more interest than I can now find in the
old battlefields, because this ground is different in its
nature, and still sweet and clean in the absence of continual
gun-fire. Our men who came to take it over from the
French — men who had been in the mud and fire of Flan-
ders— stared around and said, "This seems like Paradise."
It was Paradise to them because of its quietude and beauty,
but they knew the old serpent of evil was about, and one
officer, as I have told before, said, "It is too quiet to be
good. And when is the battle going to begin?" He and
the men with him had taken over that very morning. They
hardly knew the points of the compass, and had but a
vague idea of the whereabouts of the enemy until other
officers came up to hand over and make them wise.

From points of vantage along this new front one can
look straight across to the German lines where the River
Oise and its canal are in the flats and marshes below our
own slopes. Their outposts are there among the willows
on the edge of a No Man's Land which is as wide as iooo
yards in places because of the swamps made by the breaking
of the canal bank, and behind them is a formidable trench
system, part of the Hindenburg line, from Queant down to
Laon.

The little town of La Fere is in the river-bed on the east
side of the canal as an outer bastion of their defences,
without any sign of life there under its broken roofs and

THE APPROACHING MENACE 171

behind shell-pierced walls beyond the ruin of St-Firmin
Church. From our observation posts on ground that rises
into hummocky hills above the St.-Ouentin Canal we can
look straight into La Fere and into the villages of Achery,
Mayot, and Brissay, where the German outposts have their
dug-outs under the ruins.

A thin grey mist crept about these places when I stared
at them the other day, and they seemed abandoned by all
human life. No smoke was above those ruins. No
sound of work or war disturbed the utter silence of these
marshlands and these broken houses behind a thin screen
of trees, wet and shiny after rain. But sometimes our men
see German soldiers moving there beyond the river, a sentry
pacing up and down his post, a grey figure motionless
among the reeds with a rifle slung across his shoulders.

South-east of the Qise the ground rises to a ridge wmich
stands as a high rampart in the German lines. It is called
the Massif de St.-Gobain, and the northern end of it, which
tapers down to the plain again, is known as the Tail of
Monceau. This abrupt range above the marshlands domi-
nates all the surrounding country, and gives the enemy a
wide observation of our lines and roads and villages for
miles around. It is bare and treeless on the heights, like
a Devonshire tor, and when I looked at it the other day,
black and grim under a grey sky, it seemed to me as a pre-
historic castle with ramparts and battlements casting a dark
shadow over the woods and villages below. Here some
old chieftain of Celtic France might have made his castle
and his camp, with a horde of shaggy warriors and a
minstrel or two to sing their bloody exploits, and some
women in the skins of beasts. The mists lay about its
lower slopes, giving a look of mystery and romance to this
natural fortress where the Germans are strongly en-
trenched.

All this country, south and east of St.-Ouentin, is wild
and rugged — what the French call accidents, with great
forests like that of Coucy, where there are still descendants

172 THE WAY TO VICTORY

of the wild boar which the Kings of France used to hunt.
Behind our lines this forest land is continued, and our men
go through big, dark woods like those of Savy and Holnon
and Frieres and Haute Tombolle. They have not been
slashed to death by shell-fire, though shells have crushed
between their glades, and when the spring and summer
make them leafy again they will seem as good to our men as
the forest of Arden, though no sweet Rosalind will be
there, or as Shrewsbury Forest — not that by Glencorse
Wood — when Robin Hood and his merry men lived under
the greenwood tree in the springtime of the world — as good
as that, unless the enemy fills them with fire and death.

Further north, where the canal goes up to St.-Quentin,
the ground is more open, with a chain of gentle slopes ris-
ing beyond that old city, so that the enemy's defensive lines
follow their contours. A few weeks ago it was so quiet
hereabout that it was possible to walk behind our lines in
full view of the enemy's position without danger, and,
what is stranger, without much sense of danger. I walked
into the village of Dallon, on the left side of the St.-Quen-
tin Canal, the other day. To the right of me was the
ruined village of Urvillers, with the German village of
Itancourt across the way up the slope.

Ahead of me, so close that I could see the holes in its
roofs and walls and separate buildings broken by shell-fire,
and the white masonry of its cathedral, stood the city of
St.-Quentin. I had seen this town first a year ago, when
the enemy retreated from a wide stretch of country east of
Peronne after the destruction of the villages. From the
Bois d'Holnon I first saw the towers of St.-Quentin and
those streets into which the old "Contemptibles" came in the
first months of the war. But this view from the south-
west is closer — so close that it seemed but a short walk
and an easy way into the heart of it, and so quiet that
death did not seem near at hand, if one went a little further
forward. The cathedral stood square and white above
the houses. Its pointed roof had been shot away, and its

THE APPROACHING MENACE 173

walls were scarred by shell-fire, and light shone through its
empty window spaces, but the great body of it had not been
shattered by the storm of war. The Palais de Justice and
the theatre and barracks were clearly visible above the
lower buildings, but as I stared into the city I knew that it
was like other cities of the war zone — desolate and dead
but for the sinister life of enemies who had driven away the
inhabitants. Here, when it was far behind the lines, the
population stayed under German rule. Its ruined streets
hold many tragic stories, and one of them is of a young
English officer who was left behind in our retreat from
Mons. He was in the Grande Place when the head of the
first German column came in, and leaning up against a wall
with a cigarette in his mouth and a rifle at his shoulder
he fired several shots at them, as the story was told me by
a French lady who saw it from a window on the other side.
This young man preferred death to surrender, and he had
his wish after firing those shots. They brought up a
machine-gun, and he fell under a hose of bullets. More
than three years have passed since then, and they have been
filled with the growth and power of the British Army, and
down its streets have poured a tide of wounded from the
fire of our guns. The new line we are holding south of
St.-Quentin has so far been very quiet, and the enemy has
been defending his positions here by old territorial troops,
not good for active warfare. But out of that quietude
perhaps before this article is printed may come a fury of
assault, for in that wooded country behind and under the
cover of the hills the enemy has been preparing evil things.

February 24
The enemy's* artillery was rather more active yesterday on
various sectors of our front than during recent weeks. His
guns were busy on the Flanders front, where in the morn-
ing he attempted a raid near Passchendaele, round Hill 70,
and Lens, where other raiders came out with no success on
each side of the valley of the Scarpe, where I watched his

174 THE WAY TO VICTORY

shells bursting about Monchy and on our ground above
Gavrelle and southwards by the Flesquieres Ridge and the
country below Cambrai. It seemed to me that many of
these scattered shots on each side of the Scarpe Valley were
for ranging purposes, and to get the variation of the wind.
German gunners fired a number of woolly bears, a mixture
of high explosive and shrapnel, which makes a big black
smudge of smoke, and they burst so high that they had no
deadly effect. All this shooting has no unusual significance.
It is not for the beginning of the great offensive, and is
only gun practice for harassing fire. In some of the
trenches opposite us are poor troops not yet replaced by
those lions who have been fed up for the fight and trained
in offensive tactics by intensive culture ioo miles or so
behind the lines. Poor troops and weary of the war and
miserable in moral — some of them who became our prison-
ers the other day had more than a touch of Polish blood.
They were glad to be taken in a raid and brought safely to
our lines.

An officer I know spoke to them in German, and after
some questions asked them whether the Kaiser was still
popular among the German troops. They shrugged their
shoulders and said, "We have no great love for him; we
love our wives and children and our little farms, and we
want the war to finish so that we can go back to them."

From the utterances of prisoners one may know some-
thing of the mentality of the enemy who lives on the other
side of the way and the changing moods that pass down his
trenches as the winds of war blow by with rumours and
hopes and false promises and whispers of revolt. But
sometimes out of the silence that reigns in No Man's Land
and the hidden life of the enemy beyond there comes a mes-
sage or a sign that reveals the latest emotion of those men.
So it was a few days ago when, stuck up between the
trenches, our sentries saw at dawn a big board with some
English words scrawled in large white letters. It was a
message of taunting and mock pity. "Peace with Ukraine,"

THE APPROACHING MENACE 175

said the words, "Hard luck on Tommy," and then in the
last line, "Poor old Tommy."

Poor old Tommy grinned at this notice-board, and
crawled out to it and brought it back as a trophy. It is
"poor old Fritz" that is the cause of the same sentiment of
condolence among our men when they talk of a German
offensive. If he tries to attack us here, they say, he will
"come up against a snag. He will get it straight in the
neck."

I have been a good deal up and down the lines lately,
and from north to south, wherever I have been, I have
heard not only officers, but men, express perfect conviction
that if the enemy tries to get through on their particular
sector he will be swept to pieces. That this is the belief
of men who have no illusions, who have no dust in their
eyes but that of the battlefields, and who will have to resist
whatever assault may come, and endure the abomination
of its shell-fire, should be reassuring to any over-anxious
minds. Our armies believe that however powerful the
enemy's attack may be we are now strong enough in de-
fence to prevent any big drive through. At the best they
could only gain portions of ground in advance of our main
defences, and in doing so they would pay a fearful price.

Meanwhile it is certain that the enemy is preparing to
bring Tanks into action. We knew some time ago that
he was training some of his troops to attack behind them,
and some of our observers have seen a Tank behind the
enemy's lines. It was lumbering around with a body of
German infantry on each side of it. This year may see
Tanks against Tanks, and many curious alterations in
tactics resulting from this moving machine-gun emplace-
ment ; but we have a long start in experience and technique,
and the advantage should be immensely on our side.

During these days and nights of war time there is in-
cessant vigilance in our lines for anything that may come
in the dawn. Always the enemy's lines are being watched,

176 THE WAY TO VICTORY

and in spite of the big, dull boredom of the battlefield,
where nothing moves except the shell-tossed earth, I find
a sense of drama in coming into one of our observation
posts near the German trenches, among the boys who sit
there with their telescopes, studying the section of the
enemy's front as bacteriologists who gaze through a micro-
scope at the life of a disease. They know every dead
tree and every hummock of earth, and every bit of ruin
within the field of their glass, and the enemy's working
parties cannot take a scratch on the earth nor put out a coil
of wire without attracting the notice of these peeping Toms.
A corporal lent me his glass yesterday and we stood side
by side under a bit of concrete for head cover in a hole in
the ground and watched the white wriggle of earth, which
was the enemy's parapet, winding over the barren fields,
and the row of tattered trees, which once I saw filled with
red flame, when a thick wood was there, and the country
which stretches away and away behind the enemy's lines,
with never a human creature to be seen among its craters.
There was a grey light everywhere, and the trenches and
the trees and bits of ruined villages and piles of broken
sand-bags and sunken roads, with dug-outs built into their
banks, were all touched with this pale glamour and had a
thousand tones of greyness between black and white. Be-
hind our lines there was the same grey loneliness and a
queer cave world where once were railway-lines, taking
people from one little town to another, but where now are
sand-bag walls and houses in the chalk like the dwellings
of prehistoric earth men. They are our men who live there,
boys who had rich dreams of life in their eyes before they
came out to these battlefields, men who knew the fine and
delicate things of a civilized world, lads who whistled down
the streets of London when the lights were lit. Now they
are in this desert of the battlefields, making their homes
below ground, and hoping that direct hits will not spoil
their evening meal.

THE APPROACHING MENACE 177

March 3
I went out into a world the other day where no shells,
bursting high or bursting low, can have any effect upon our
men who live there. No German barrage can "put the
wind up," because in this world there is no wind. Visibility
may be good or bad, but the enemy has no observation here,
though he is on top all the time. I went out into No
Man's Land beyond our lines, and was as safe as in the
Strand at home, though only a few yards away from the
enemy's outposts. For this world into which I went, leav-
ing the blue of the sky and the noise of things that "go off"
suddenly, was deep underground.

It is a place of long galleries, sixty feet below the out-
side earth, in which one may walk for hours and hours and
not come to the end of them. I walked for hours and hours,
and my guide, who knows these tunnels blindfold, pointed
to the entrance of another gallery, and said, "That leads
to another part of the Front, and would take another day
to explore."

My guide was one of the officers of the Australian Tun-
nelling Company, which during the past two years has
done a great part of the work in boring this subterranean
system below some section of our battle-line. They are
mostly miners from the goldfields of Western Australia —
hard, tough fellows with a special code of their own as re-
gards their ways of discipline and work, but experts at their
job, and with all their pride in it and a courage which would
frighten the devils of hell if they happened to meet in the
dark. When they first came over with their plant the Ger-
mans were mining actively under our lines and blowing up
our infantry in the trenches. It was the worst terror of
war before poison gas came, and I used to pity our poor
officers and men who knew, and hated to know, that the
enemy was sapping his way under them, and that at any
moment they might be buried in a crater or hurled sky high.
It is many months now since the enemy's mining activities

178 THE WAY TO VICTORY

were reported in our communiques. They were beaten out
of the field by British, Australian, Canadian, and New
Zealand miners, who fought the Germans back under-
ground from gallery to gallery, blowing them up again and
again whenever they drew near, and racing them for the
possession of the leads whenever they tried to regain part
of their destroyed systems. The Australian tunnellers had
a race with the German then, and the lives of many men
depended on their speed. They could hear him tamping or
charging the mine. But they drove in at three times his
speed at working^when they are "all out" they can do that
every time — blew in the ends of one of his galleries, and
then broke through his timber into the tunnel.

The dash through of the Australian tunnellers with
rifles and revolvers was an exciting adventure. The enemy
had escaped, but their system was destroyed before they
could touch off their mines. The Germans know now that
they are beaten underground, and it is an honour of which
this Australian company is proud that, apart from their own
casualties, not a single infantry soldier of ours has lost his
life by hostile mining since they challenged the enemy and
beat him in this part of the battle-front.

It is an uncanny thing to walk through this subterranean
world. It reminded me yesterday of "The Time Machine,"
by H. G. Wells, where the traveller in the fourth dimension
goes down the shaft and discovers the underground people,
and hears the throb of mighty engines and feels the touch
of soft bodies in the darkness. It was dark in the begin-
ning of the tunnels, and down some of the galleries running
out to the fighting points, and men pressed against the
chalk. They were furnished with wooden tables and
sometimes there was the clank of steel hat against steel
hat. Here and there for 500 yards or so the tunnel roof
was so low that one had to walk half doubled, and even then
hit one's head sharply against the timber props. A candle
held by the man in front was the only light in the black-
ness. But presently the underground world became more

THE APPROACHING MENACE 179

spacious and lightened. A tall man could walk upright,
and long galleries were lit by bulbs of electric light. On
each side of the galleries were rooms carved out of the
chalk. They were furnished with wooden tables and
benches, and the miners were playing cards there. A fuggy
smell, and a dampish mist crept towards us, and my guide
said, "There are a good many men hereabouts."

Through holes in the chalk walls I looked into caverns
where men lay asleep in bunks. The voices of men, yawn-
ings and hummings and whistlings came through chinks in
the rock, to the silence of the galleries. Later on, after
much more walking, there was a queer throbbing and
whirring, and in a big vault was a power-house, with three
electric engines providing the light of the galleries. Not
far away was a room from which a fierce heat came and a
smell of good food cooking. It was the kitchen, with big
stoves and ovens, where meals were being cooked by
sweltering men within a few yards of the front-line
trenches. In a little while a big electric fan will blow a
draught through the kitchen and take away the heat. In
other rooms were field dressing-stations, and we came to a
subway with trolley-lines, down which the wounded are
brought from the battlefield up above, so that there is none
of that stumbling and drooping and danger of death on the
way, as when stretcher-bearers have to carry men over
shell-cratered land and down narrow trenches under fire.
The roofs of the tunnels were richly coloured with a reddish
fungus, which hangs down like stalactites, and by a queer
freak of life which persists by the stubborn desire of
nature, some of the square planks used for propping up the
galleries had sprouted, and there were little white shoots
from these beams. We went deeper down and further for-
ward. In one room men were listening like telephone
operators, but the instrument in their ears tells stranger tales
than those that travel along overhead wires. They were
listening to the sounds of German life in other tunnels

180 THE WAY TO VICTORY

like these, the sounds of men walking and talking and filling
sand-bags and moving timber. The listeners are so expert
that they can tell by the nature of the sounds exactly what
the enemy is doing through a chalk wall seventy feet thick.
Their knowledge of the enemy life is so exact by this means
that when they captured some of his galleries they found
them exactly as they had mapped them out beforehand by
the indications of sound. Presently we went into one of
the fighting points driven out beyond the lateral galleries.
And my guide said, "Here we will be quiet, because we
don't want the enemy to get suspicious. We are now out
in No Man's Land/'

It was a- safe and pleasant way of wandering into No
Man's Land. The war seemed a world away. It was only
some hours later, after a good lunch with good fellows in
the bowels of the earth, when we came up to the surface
of the earth and saw the sky again and the dreary waste of
the battlefield and heard the cry and crash of scattered
shells that we remembered our whereabouts and this busi-
ness above ground. The Australian tunnellers live below
ground for the greater part of their life, and some of them
have the pale look of men who are out of the light. In
their spare time down below they play cards, and yarn of
old days in the goldfields, and carve faces in the chalk, as one
man had carved the face of Shakespeare — "Old Bill/' as he
called him — exactly like the Stratford bust. It is a strange
life in this modern world below the fields of death, and
there is a sinister purpose at the end of the tunnels, but
these men, by their toil and courage, with picks and ex-
plosives and listening instruments, have saved the lives
of many hundreds of British soldiers, and long after the
war is finished this underground world of theirs will remain
as a memorial of their splendid labour.

Hostile shelling is becoming more severe on several sectors
of our front as far north as the Passchendaele Ridge, and
southwards in the district of the Cambrai fighting. Last

THE APPROACHING MENACE 181

night there was gas shelling of our positions round Havrin-
court in that neighbourhood for four hours, starting from
six o'clock, and the enemy flung a number of high-explosive
shells along the roads. All this shows an activity some-
what beyond the normal of what we have experienced dur-
ing the winter warfare, which has been unusually quiet, but
it needs an expert to interpret the various signs and to co-
ordinate them into an exact plan of the enemy's intentions
or fears. We have those experts, and they know pretty
well what the enemy is about. . . . Meanwhile the weather
is improving, and there is the spirit of spring over the fields
and in the woods. The bushes and young saplings are
putting out their buds. The first daffodils are pushing up
through last year's leaves, and green life is showing through
the browns of winter. It is sad and horrible that beyond
the sunlight and the singing birds and all this call to the
blood of youth there should be the shadow of the powers
that destroy. Over great tracts of ground the coming of
spring will make but little difference to the look of things,
for there is nothing there that has any life to grow again.

I have just been to those battlefields of ours northwards
from Lens, round Hulluch and the old mining country be-
yond Mazingarbe and Nceux-les-Mines. In winter or sum-
mer the scenery here is the same — a wide, flat plain, quite
treeless, because long ago the woods were cut down by
shell-fire, with the white chalk thrown up from the long
trenches tracing queer winding patterns over the darker
earth, and here and there the steep grey sides of an old
mine-crater, and everywhere as far as the eye can reach the
tangled ruins of pit-heads and power-houses, with the iron
of their machinery all twisted and rusted among the conical
slagheaps which are the black hills of this most desolate
land.

What does the coming of spring mean to a country which
for nearly four years has been blasted beyond the power
of resurrection until the earth below is turned over the ruin

182 THE WAY TO VICTORY

above, and all traces of this massacre are hidden? Round
about here, where the enemy's artillery is now active, our
line has changed less than in any other part of the Front.
Indeed, it is the only long sector of our fighting-lines which
has hardly moved forward since the beginning of the
Somme battles. The trenches this side of Hulluch are
where they were when I first went there after the Battle
of Loos, in September 191 5, and behind them are the same
places of ill-fame, as Vermelles, where in the early days
of the war the French fought from garden to garden and
wall to wall, until that historic fight in the chateau, when
the enemy fell through the floor upon them, and a French
lieutenant used a marble Venus to knock out their brains.
The village is not much more of a ruin than when I first
saw it, though many shells have powdered its dust since
then, and La Rutoire farm, familiar to thousands of our
soldiers who have dodged death there, is the same huddle of
sinister walls pierced by monstrous holes into which the
enemy still flings his shells.

When I passed a few hundred yards away the enemy was
at it again, as always. He hates to leave any pile of bricks
within range of his guns when he has once made good target
practice. Our men in country like this date their reminis-
cences by the destruction of some landmark. One officer
told me that he came to the line after the Tower Bridge
at Loos had been "done in," and was surprised because
I had seen it standing. And another remembered some-
thing that had happened before we knocked down Wingies
Tower. I looked over into the German country up by
Haisnes and Douvrin, and wondered what was going on in
that silent landscape where there was no sign of life nor any
movement except when the sunlight chased the shadows
across the chalky slopes and into the black holes of ruined
villages. Across all this country of French mine-fields odd
shells from our guns and German guns went howling like
banshees, and fountains of earth shot up where they burst.

THE APPROACHING MENACE 188

IV

Raids and Reconnaissances

March 5
There is still nothing but raiding to record, but from the
enemy's side and our own it is developing in intensity, so
that hardly a sector of the line is immune from these
alarums and excursions, and all along the Front the nights
are spent in watching out for any rush that may come after
sharp and sudden bombardment. It is a grim kind of
warfare, requiring special qualities of character and train-
ing— the nerve power which enables a man to play a lone
hand in a tight corner, the hunter's instinct of hearing, the
sense of direction in darkness, and the cunning of attack.
The volunteer is better than the pressed man, and practically
all our raiders are volunteers, who ask for a share in the
next man hunt.

An Australian officer told me yesterday that for the raid
which he led opposite Warneton that night he paraded 130
of his men and asked if any of them would care to come
along with him in that adventure. Only five of them did
not care — married men with children. All the others were
keen to go, and those chosen were trained beforehand for
the job — intensive training — like athletes for a Marathon
race.

I sat down with the officer and his mess-mates to a dish
of tea, which one can always get in an Australian company,
when they assembled after the raid of the night. They
were a clean-cut, lithe-looking set of fellows, with a fine
simplicity of speech and manners, a straight-talking,
straight-thinking crowd, with a gift of quiet laughter. The
officer who sat next to me had been a grazier on a big scale
in Australia. He was not much different, I guess, from one
of those young English knights who came riding out to
France with Sir Walter Manny, when there were other

184 THE WAY TO VICTORY

kinds of raids, six centuries ago. That was how he looked
to me, with his tall, long-limbed figure, and a light of steel
in his eyes. He had been gassed a little twice in two years
of war out here, but never wounded in night raids and
scouting. "No such luck," he said.

A friend of his had pushed a pen in a city office of
Australia, but now was a hunter of men, and so keen a
scout that he was going up last night to look at a raid in
which he had no share, as a matter of interest. "And take
care you don't get a whack in the belly-band," said the
colonel in command.

A great man that colonel, and he ought to be put into a
ballad like Sir Richard Grenville or Sir Francis Drake. He
was a Scot from Australia, hard as oak, tough as oak, with
an extraordinary winning smile under fierce eyebrows, and
with a blood-curdling way of speech which hid, I am sure,
as gentle a nature as ever killed an enemy and loved a friend.
So are some men made. It was easy to see he loved this
band of young lions under his command, and that they
thought all the world of him and would do desperate things
to get a word of praise from the "old man," as they called
him. I looked down the line of these faces and felt sorry
for the Germans in their sector. Outside were the men
who had just come back from one of the night's raids. One
of the officers with me laughed as he looked at them, and
said, "You can't beat those boys. Look at them mouching
around just as they do on their farms at home. They take
everything as it comes and don't alter by a hair's-breadth,
and carry on in this bloody war as though it were their
normal way of life."

The signallers were going up for the next night's raid.
In single file up a duck-board, with their steel hats aslant
and squared jaws. One of them grinned as he passed, but
the others were grave, with a look of importance.

In a hut nearby an Australian officer was interrogating
men of the raid that had just been done. One by one they

THE APPROACHING MENACE 185

came inside, with tousled hair and mud on their clothes,
after an hour or two's sleep.

"Did you see any dead in the trench?" asked the officer,
and the answer was, "Two, in the front-line trench." "How
much dead ?" asked the officer. "Oh, fresh," said the man,
''killed by the barrage, I guess."

"Trenches bad ?" was the next question. "Full of water,"
said the man. "Like to live in them?" "Should hate to,"
said the man. The questions were simple and direct. The
answers were simple and direct. There was no gulf of
etiquette or constraint between the officer and the men.
They understood each other.

There were three raids done by the Australians the night
before last and one last night, and the story of them shows
the meaning of this night raiding and the things that hap-
pen. The place to be attacked in the most important raid
was a system of trenches to the north of the River Lys, op-
posite the village of Warneton, which is in German hands,
and across the La Basseville-Warneton road. The raiders
moved up in the darkness to the point of assembly, and it
was slow going and an anxious time for the officers during
the wait for the moment to attack. The German rocket
lights were rising and falling, and if the assembly were seen
it would mean many casualties and certain failure. Two
of these lights fell right into the middle of a party and
made a white glare over them, so that the officers cursed
beneath their breath and expected the worst. But the
enemy did not see them, and nothing happened until, at
nearly midnight, the bombardment started.

"It was a barrage of perfect accuracy, better than Mes-
sines," said one of the officers, "and the men were astound-
ingly close to it, but did not get hurt. Then they made their
dash in small groups, which knew exactly what points they
had to reach, all working together like a professional foot-
ball team, with centre-forwards and half-backs covering the
field of attack, insuring clean flanks, securing blocks in the

186 THE WAY TO VICTORY

enemy's support trench to prevent the enemy coming up,
and working down the communication trench from the front
line to the support, and going straight to the strong points
to knock out the machine-guns. "

As soon as the dash was made rockets went up from the
German lines, and everything was in a white light. The
front trench was entered, and at a strong point on the right
there was a sharp fight for a machine-gun. The enemy
here got up on to the parapet, and as the Australians drew
near hurled bombs at them. The Australians answered
with bombs and rifle-fire, and captured the strong point
with its machine-gun, and blew up the dug-outs. They
cleaned up the front line, and came across several dead and
one live man, a poor, trembling fellow of eighteen, who had
been in the army for twelve months. Other parties worked
up the communication trench, and came across a dug-out
inhabited by the enemy. "Come out of it," they shouted,
but the enemy would not come out. An explosive charge
was put down the entrance, and now they will never come
out. Here and there the mopping-up men met with re-
sistance, but it was easily overpowered. In one dug-out
they found a quartermaster's stores, and in the support line
two machine-guns, which they took back with them. Small
parties of the enemy defended themselves with bombs, but
none of the Australians was hit, and about fifty Germans
were killed. An officer and four prisoners were taken at
one point, and six men elsewhere. The officer wore the
Iron Cross, but was in extreme fear, and small blame to
him. All the trenches were in a bad state, and did not
show signs of recent work.

Another Australian raid was carried out further north
by Gapaard, and the men had to work round a crater full of
water in the road which led up to the German line. South
of this road the ground was very sloppy and the going slow,
but there was no machine-gun fire against them, and they
only found two men alive in this sector, both of them half

THE APPROACHING MENACE 187

mad with fear. They were brought back as prisoners, and
the Australians returned after a thorough search without a
casualty.

A queer incident happened on this sector of the Front
a few days ago. It began when the Germans tried to am-
bush one of our patrols working between two outposts,
whose footsteps they could hear scrunching over the frozen
puddles. The Australians retaliated for this attempt, and
presently from a German outpost a Red Cross flag waved.
No notice was taken at first, but after the sign had been re-
peated several times an Australian sergeant took off his
tunic, in order not to show any shoulder badge, and walked
out into No Man's Land towards the German flag. From
that side came one of the enemy's ambulance men, a non-
commissioned officer, who said that there were five wounded
Germans in an outpost just out of sight below the slope.
He wanted leave to fetch them in by daylight without being
shot from our post opposite. This was allowed, and a mes-
sage of thanks was thrown over afterwards. But the fol-
lowing day our outpost nearest to the place where the men
had been wounded was blown out by gun-fire.

These are small incidents, happening often enough along
the lines, but not officially recorded. They are of no great
importance in the vast scale of the war, but they reveal,
more perhaps than big battles, the human nature of the
soldiers on both sides of the line, because they are more
individual. It is a human nature full of strange contradic-
tions and eccentricities of character.

One of the prisoners brought down yesterday morning
was distressed lest he should lose a charm he wore round
his neck. He explained that it made him proof against
shell-fire, bombs, rifle grenades, bayonets, and butt-ends.
He had found it very useful in this war, and as a proof of
its virtues pointed to himself, as a prisoner safe until the
war shall end.

188 THE WAY TO VICTORY

March io
Up to this evening when I write, no further attacks by the
enemy have followed his futile attempts to capture and hold
our positions south of Houthulst Forest and on the Polder-
hoek Ridge, for which his troops fought very fiercely on
Friday last, and all through Saturday night by Polderhoek.
It would be curious to know what their battalion and divi-
sional commanders think of the operations at this moment,
when they are writing their reports of these actions, which
have now died out into artillery retaliation and harassing
fire, and when we have re-established our lines completely
in both places, after most gallant fighting by our men. The
net result for the enemy has been complete failure to hold
a yard of ground, most severe losses in dead and wounded,
and a revelation of incompetent command. Both attacks
seem to have been botched by the commanders, who ordered
their men forward into death-traps.

We now know that it was planned to make attacks on the
morning of February 28 at Houthulst Forest and at Polder-
hoek, and both operations were probably schemed out on a
bigger scale than actually was launched. They were
frustrated on that date by the formidable barrages which
our guns laid down, making the assembly of the German
troops impossible and keeping their front and support lines
under violent fire. The enemy's artillery replied heavily,
and used gas shells in order to silence our batteries, but
without the desired effect.

As far as the Polderhoek attack is concerned, it seems
that the German officers in that sector got the impression
that their plans had been revealed to us, because they
paraded their men and told them that the attack had been
postponed owing to information having reached us from
deserters. It was not very cheering news for men about to
come into the open against us, and they must have started
with a moral handicap. Nevertheless they came forward
in assault south-east of Houthulst Forest on Friday morn-
ing, at four o'clock, with an obstinate determination to

THE APPROACHING MENACE 189

seize a salient which we held there. Their infantry move-
ment was preceded by very violent gun-fire over our out-
posts and front-line system of trenches, which were lightly
held, but in spite of this pounding of the ground, our
machine-guns caught their advancing wave and broke it.

On the right the assault was checked, but on the left the
German storm troops, armed with flammenwerfer or flame
machines, which made a line of fire in front of them, de-
bouched from the forest and succeeded in piercing our out-
post positions. The party who established themselves here
numbered about 300, and they brought up machine-guns
and large supplies of bombs in order to resist our counter-
attacks, which they knew would follow quickly.

The English troops who made the first attempt to dis-
lodge the intruders were reinforced later by the King's
Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, the Koylies, as they are
called for short, who made a separate counter-attack with ir-
resistible spirit. They advanced upon the enemy cheering
and shouting, and the Germans, who had. shown consider-
able courage until then, seemed to lose their nerve and ran
back part of the way without waiting for the Yorkshire
lads to reach them. The Koylies followed them steadily
and quickly, in spite of machine-gun and rifle fire, and the
enemy's barrage, and drove them back further and did not
halt until they had restored our line and got beyond the
original German outposts. Meanwhile on this Friday
morning down at Polderhoek there was no infantry move-
ment and only heavy harassing fire from German guns along
the Ypres-Menin road and the neighbouring battlefield. It
was not until six o'clock on Friday evening that the Ger-
man troops of the 18th Reserve Division were sent for-
ward on a narrow front in order to seize the nose-shaped
spur of the Polderhoek Ridge. The preceding barrage-
fire was extremely heavy, smashing up the ground and
girdling the ridge with shell splinters, and under cover of
this the German storm troops obtained a lodging in a
trench on the northern edge of the ridge where they main-

190 THE WAY TO VICTORY

tained their position through the evening and part of the
night with bombs and machine-guns.

It was the Royal Fusiliers who made the first counter-
attacks against them, and there was some fierce bomb fight-
ing at close quarters, in which the Fusiliers behaved with
great gallantry. Trench-mortars were brought into action
by our troops, and they must have caused many casualties
in the enemy's position.

The King's Royal Rifles made the final counter-attack
which drove the enemy out before dawn yesterday morn-
ing. They advanced with a most determined courage, and
the enemy broke and retired before them, leaving their
dead. By an early hour on Saturday morning we had
gained back everything which the German storm troops had
seized in their first rush. The assaults were not repeated,
and the gradual quieting down of the enemy's artillery was
a confession of failure. Some of our officers had a narrow
escape from death. They belonged to a company head-
quarters, and the dug-out was broken by three direct hits
of large shells, so that the head-cover collapsed on top of
them and they were entombed. The rescue parties who
dug them out did not expect to find one of them alive, but
when they opened a way they found them all unhurt ex-
cept for shocks and bruises. So ends the brief record of
the German assaults. It was a wretched, futile business as
far as the enemy is concerned. It was apparently not
planned on a big scale, and had only a limited objective;
but the complete failure of these two attacks are encourag-
ing to us, and show that the German troops are not better
men now than when it was our turn to attack, and that our
men should be more than a match for them in defensive
warfare as well as in assault.

March ii
The enemy's gun-fire is increasing in violence along some
sectors of the Front, and he has been shelling heavily about
Armentieres, Neuve Chapelle, Fleurbaix, and other parts in

THE APPROACHING MENACE 191

the centre of our line, but apart from a few raids on our
outposts, no infantry action has followed his efforts, which
were frustrated on Friday and Saturday at Houthulst
Forest and Polderhoek. But his guns are tuning up, and
the weather is so fine and bright that he may be tempted
to take advantage of it. Our troops are on the alert all
along the line, and send up warning rockets when there is
any sign of movement in No Man's Land.

The SOS signal went up this morning south of Armen-
tieres, and our guns answered it with a protective barrage
of intense fire, and so far the enemy has not left his trenches
there.

A few days ago there was a similar incident south of St-
Ouentin. The quietude of this part of the line was sud-
denly broken by red rockets flaming out above the folds of
earth where both sides hold the outposts in view of the
great cathedral, which rises like a mediaeval castle through
the morning mists and the evening shadow-world. Some-
thing had started the enemy, and his infantry were calling
for the guns by firing clusters of fire-balls.

Further along the line a raid, or a German patrol party,
seen crawling across No Man's Land, was the cause of
signals going up in our lines, and the gunners on both sides
saw the rockets, and messages were telephoned through to
batteries and groups. The country was swept with fire, and
for two hours there was a storm of shells from our guns and
theirs. Then it died down, for no masses of field-grey men
moved into the open, and no men in khaki went over the
top. It was a false alarm on both sides, but showed the
vigilance of the outposts and the power of the guns which
lie low and say nothing for most days of the week.

I have been in that part of the line for two or three days,
below St.-Ouentin. Here, as all along the Front, every
man is watching out for the least sign of attack, but I found
among them a kind of incredulity that old Fritz should try
any monkey tricks against their front, because of the
natural strength of their positions and the completeness

192 THE WAY TO VICTORY

of their defensive preparations. This country is so steeped
in a slumberous peacefulness on these fine days of spring
that it is hard to believe that on any morning a fury of gun-
fire should suddenly blast its slopes, and that out of the life-
less silence of the German lines, out of their still woods, and
out of the ruined villages on the hill-sides, or in the valleys,
waves of men should come to face the tattoo of our machine-
guns. I walked through a copse on the edge of No Man's
Land and looked through the twigs at the enemy's posi-
tions. Nothing stirred there. In the light of the after-
noon sun the broken walls of the villages on the German
side were as white as chalk, and there were two mebus, or
pill-boxes, very clear against the black shadow of the trees
behind them. Only a few guns were firing — theirs as well
as ours. Machine-guns were chattering up in the blue
where aeroplanes were on the wing, and German "Archies"
fired at them, and the report of the small shells went echo-
ing down the valley of the Oise, like the twanging of deep
harp strings. But the silence was intense between these
noises of things "going off," and into the silence, quite close
to me, there came the warbling of a thrush singing the spring
song in the twilight, with merry little notes, without a heart-
beat for the strife of men. A queer contrast on the edge
of No Man's Land.

"Jolly perfect weather," said a young gunner officer,
further up the line where, by walking up a slope, one can
see the white cliff-like walls of the St.-Quentin Cathedral,
very ghostly and insubstantial through the haze of the day.
I think the spring song was in this fellow's heart, also, as
he sat in the doorway of his hut, looking out to his gun-
pits.

"Not a bad spot, this," he said, letting his eyes wander
round the pastoral scene.

It is a spot well within range of the German guns, and in
the event of a German attack it is the duty of this young
officer to do what he calls "the V.C. stunt" by keeping his
battery in action until he can see the whites of his enemy's

THE APPROACHING MENACE 193

eyes. But he was not worrying about that. The sun was
shining, and it was a topping day, and good to be alive.
He had a gramophone in his hut, and we listened to a piece
by Kriesler and a 'cello solo by some one else, and a little
ragtime to bring us down to earth again. The enemy was
within short range, and he might attack in the morning, but
it was a very good gramophone, and music is like water to
parched souls. All along the line our men are like that
gunner officer. They are keeping a sharp look-out, but
they are not worrying before it is time to worry, and they
are confident — as this gunner and his brother officers are,
and all the men I have lately met — that if the enemy makes
a big attack he will be mowed down on his way, and will
pay a frightful price for any gain of ground. It is in that
spirit that our armies wait.

March 17
A whole month of fine weather has gone by and the
enemy's offensive operations have been limited to a number
of small raids, a demonstration attack near Passchendaele
which ended in disaster, and concentrations of fire with gas
and high explosives on several sectors of our front. How-
ever, we still have full evidence of the enemy's plans as far
as military preparations are concerned for attacks along
our front. There is very little about the enemy's organiza-
tion movement and work behind his lines which our armies
do not know. The intelligence branch of our service has
become extraordinary scientific, and day by day the military
life and intentions of the enemy lie open to it like an open
book written in cipher of which most of the code words are
known. The enemy is afraid of this knowledge of ours
for many things, and quite lately he has been staggered
by the accuracy of our information which has discovered
his plan before it could be carried out. What is not so
easy to know is the political brain behind the military
weapon, and until one knows the secret of that psychology
one cannot tell exactly how far the plans of the German

194 THE WAY TO VICTORY

army chiefs will be modified. It is probable that only
three men in Germany have the controlling decision, and
it is likely that those three are at the present moment torn
by many doubts and fears, so that their decision is delayed
and perplexed. Meanwhile there are many things as clear
as sunlight from a military point of view. One thing is
the gradual piling up by the enemy of his numbers in men
and guns on this front, and all that that involves in work
and movement behind his lines. Another thing is the
spirit of his troops and of their quality in attack. That, I
think, is a problem that must be causing grave disquietu.de
to the German High Command. For it is very doubtful
whether the main body of the German armies are equal to
the moral strain of a prolonged attack on the Western
Front. Not since the second Battle of Ypres have the
Germans attempted a big attack against the British, and
nothing but the bloody failure of Verdun against the
French. For a year the enemy's High Command has had
to adopt the system of using special storm troops, picked
men of exceptional courage and training, to counter-attack
during one of our battles, but in a big German offensive
any hope of victory or defeat would depend upon the ordi-
nary divisional troops and not on special bodies trained
for assault. Many of those troops are the wreckage of di-
visions shattered by French and British gun-fire and sent
to the Eastern Front for rest, and while there milked for
more than a year of all their finest men as drafts for Flan-
ders and Champagne. The residue left after that handling
cannot be first class. We know that much of it is weak.
It has been proved by our recent raids and by the failure
of German attacks on a small scale that the troops engaged
are utterly war weary and are extremely disinclined to
fight.

These things must not be exaggerated. Germany still
has good men, many strong fighting divisions, and many
officers who believe that a successful offensive is possible.
But for an offensive on a great scale the best divisions are

THE APPROACHING MENACE 195

dependent on the weakest, and I am firmly convinced that
in the mass attacks the enemy in the long run will be at the
mercy of that weak and tired strain.

There is another thing which should give the German
pause. It is the power of our defence and the spirit of
our men. He knows a good deal about the power of our
defence. Like ours, his intelligence service is scientific, and,
in modern warfare, not many secrets may be kept. So he
knows that we have defensive systems which will demand
a great sacrifice of life before they can be overwhelmed.
Of the fighting quality of our men he knows enough, not
only from last year's fighting in Flanders, when all the
luck of the weather and ground was against them, but from
recent experience in raids and counter-attacks. But the
enemy does not know as much as I do about the present
spirit of our men, and I would like to tell him in all sin-
cerity. I would like to tell him that* our men, after a long
rest from the terrific fighting of last year, are back to their
best form again, and that from one end of the Front to
the other they are awaiting a German offensive with an al-
most terrible conviction that they will smash it by great
slaughter.

I am not writing "hot air," of which there has been far
too much from time to time, but the sober truth as I have
seen it along the lines during the last six weeks or so. It
does not matter what sector of the Front one goes to, the
officers and men all say the same thing. They are so cer-
tain that if the enemy comes over he will be mowed down
in waves that they hesitate to believe that he will dare this
adventure on their particular part of the Front. But it is
the same on any part of the Front north and south of them,
so that one cannot find one weak spot where there is doubt
and anxiety.

These men of ours know that a German attack will not
be an amusing game for them — that it will be preceded by
very heavy fire, and that the fighting will be hard, but they

196 THE WAY TO VICTORY

are utterly scornful of the idea that the Germans have a
dog's chance of breaking through in depth.

"We shall smash him to hell," is their grim way of put-
ting it, and they mean what they say.

This spirit of our men is amazing even to me, though I
have known them since the war began its big battles. Their
refusal to be worried before there is need to worry is an
heroic thing which is better than the sound of trumpets
along the roads of France. They turn the sharp edge of
tragedy itself by the mock in their hearts, and by the vital
way in which they enjoy the hour that is with them. They
have made a game out of the foulest weapon in war, which
is gas, and yesterday I wish Ludendorff had been standing
by my side to see a mounted race with gas-masks, and how
these English boys made sport behind the lines.

A number of London men had arranged a gymkhana
near their camp, while waiting for what may happen; and
there was good comedy and good sport on a perfect after-
noon, with the usual orchestra of gun-fire in the back-
ground— but by luck no German aeroplane overhead to
spoil the picture. The gas-mask race was done by about a
score of fellows mounted on "hairies" from the Transport
Service, whose hoofs were like thunder on the ground when
they stretched out in a gallop, flinging the turf up behind
them, and cheered on by crowds of London soldiers. The
mounted men had to ride about a mile, then put on their
masks, and at full gallop take a hurdle on their way to the
winning-post. "There will be some casualties," said one
of the officers before this event, and one's heart thumped
at the sight of that wild rush of centaurs in a whirl of hair
and hoofs. They put on their gas-masks in a second or
two, as they rode, and looked like devils as they lay low
over their horses' necks, with beast-like faces watching for
the jump. Not a man fell, so far as I could see, and a
wave of laughter followed them up the course. The scene
was like a miniature Derby Day, and on every side I heard
the good old Cockney accent, and the spirit of the great old

THE APPROACHING MENACE 197

town in a holiday mood was there on this field within range
and sound of the guns. The general and his staff were by
the winning-post on a Service wagon. Other wagons were
drawn up along the course, like the coaches at Epsom, and
crowded with young officers. Refreshment tents were on
the other side of the field, and one tent for "Palmistry and
Love Philtres." Tommies of London Town played at be-
ing "bookies," and shouted out "Four to one on the field,"
or "Four to one bar one," when their officers rode out for
a new race on their own horses and galloped down the
straight. But laughter rang out loudest at the appearance
of a sham general, with a fierce moustache and a yard of
decorations across his breast and spurs as big as soup plates.
He was mounted on a hairy mule, with long ears and a sad
face, and followed by a comic mounted A.D.C. The real
general returned his salute and laughed heartily.

March 19
The enemy is using an increasing quantity of gas shells,
with the object of stupefying our gunners and spreading
a zone of poison vapours over our camps near the line. It
is an invisible menace, which puts all our men on the alert
for any faint smell borne down the breeze or for the slight-
est whiff of fumes causing a smart to the eyes and skin.
But our men are conscious of the danger and are trained
to be ready instantly at all times and in all places with an
unfailing safeguard. They work, sleep and eat with their
gas-masks handy, no further away than their left hip, and
practise wearing these things on and off duty, marching,
running, and riding. These practises produce uncanny
scenes along the roads and in the fields of war, so inhuman
and fantastic that if any creature came from another planet
and visited this Western Front and fell among a group of
these masked men busy with mysterious labour above earth,
in dwellings dug into the hill-sides or among the ruins of
churches, mediaeval mansions, and farmsteads smashed to
matchwood, he would be terrified by the beast-like aspect

198 THE WAY TO VICTORY

of the earth's inhabitants, and believe that they were evil
monsters who had entered into possession of man's inherit-
ance after the destruction of his civilization.

Our men make a game of the business — I described the
race of the London men on the old hairies of the trans-
port service — and I think they enjoy the hideous effect they
make upon the passers-by. I passed a crowd of them yes-
terday, busy with the cleaning of a lorry column, and an-
other crowd marching back from a bath, like a battalion
of anthropoid apes, and some gun teams at artillery prac-
tice, with these goggles and nozzles hiding their human-
ity. It is a good joke to them, and they compete with each
other in the length of time they can wear the mask and the
physical exertions they do in it, but I confess the very sight
of them puts the wind up my back hair by its frightfulness.

There are other queer-looking beings along the roads and
in the fields, and truly this Western Front of ours and the
country in its rear offer the most amazing pageant the
world has ever seen. The Chinkies, who are road-mend-
ing and felling timber for us in some back areas, always
fascinate me when I pass them. In the grey mists of the
West the children of the sun keep smiling at the strange
life and ways out here. A motor-car with a "brass hat"
inside appeals to their simple sense of humour, and they
laugh like anything when a tyre bursts. They stand and
chuckle at a battalion of marching men going up to the
Front with their packs on, and a whistling tune on their
lips in time to the tramp of their feet. Some comical
thought passes in their Oriental brains. To us they are
picturesque fellows in their padded clothes of blue cloth
and all sorts of odds and ends of hats, from the bowler to
the cloth cap and the billycock.

On other roads in the rear are French x\rabs, Sene-
galese, Annamites, and strange, soft-eyed fellows with long
silky hair done up in a "bun," and black men from the
African coasts. They are labour companies.

On the edge of the great desolation, among the wreck-

THE APPROACHING MENACE 199

age of French villages and by the fallen masonry of ruined
churches, yellow flowers are growing between the stones,
and birds are beginning to build their nests in the shell-
pierced walls. Red Cross flags wave above some of these
collections of ruin, where numberless little wooden huts
with semicircular roofs of iron — the famous Nissen hut,
which has become one of the most familiar objects in the
landscape of the war zone — have been fitted in between the
broken wall and under the shelter of tattered trees. They
are large flags which spread out in the breeze so that Ger-
man airmen may see them if they like, and it seemed to
me yesterday as I motored through a great tract of this
war-swept land in the glamorous light of the setting sun,
that they were like the banners outside the pavilions of
mediaeval knights, and that this Red Cross was the only
sign of chivalry in this blasted country.

It is in the twilight, just before darkness, that these
places become spiritualized by an unearthly atmosphere, so
that one has a sense of ghosts about and realizes the world
tragedy of this stricken landscape. For miles, and scores
of miles, one travels through deserted battlefields, and there
is not a village standing nor a house, but only the relics
of old trenches and earthworks and wire entanglements
and machine-gun posts, where thousands of men once
fought in great slaughter and where other men now live
in holes or huts.

An old woman was driving six lean cows across the bat-
tle-fields of the Somme as dusk fell yesterday, and there
was no other living thing in sight where once our battal-
ions went forward into great fire, and no sound where once
I heard the tumult of tremendous bombardment. But all
these fields were haunted for me by the spirits of our men
who fought there. It seemed a long, long time ago. Be-
hind the lines which are drawn far beyond those old bat-
tlefields north of Bapaume and east of Peronne there is the
life of our armies now in being, and the pageantry of war

200 THE WAY TO VICTORY

has shifted to that country, more remote from civilization
because it has this great desolation behind it. There is no
town which our men can reach to see the light in shop win-
dows or get a meal in an inn. They are as cut off from
those kindly things of life as though they were among the
craters of the moon. But out there they have improvised
a life of their own. . Recreation huts and rest huts have
been built near their camps. The cinema offers its thrill
to them in a pavilion tent.

Officers' clubs have sprung up among the ruins of out-
landish places in long, low huts neatly built, with a few
pictures on the walls and some easy-chairs in the reading-
room, and a good meal at a small price, wTith now and then
a band to play in the soup and give a ragtime melody to
the stewed steak and a piece of Mendelssohn with the spot-
ted dog. In at least one town behind the Front there is
an officers' club with little W.A.A.C.'s to wait, and an
impressive company of staff officers with coloured arm-
bands and many ribbons, so that the scene is like one from
a grand opera on the war.

Up at the Front there is not this colour and splendour,
but I like to watch our young officers come in straight from
the line, yet very neat and clean after a wash and brush-up,
and with a look of cheerful boredom with things in gen-
eral and the war in particular, though they are as keen as
mustard at their own job. There are officers from the
good old English battalions with clean-cut English faces,
and Highlanders and Australians and Canadians, and an
American or two attached in some way to our forces, as a
medico or an engineer, and French interpreters, and some-
times a visitor to the Front in "civvies," who gazes round
at all this company of fighting men with eyes fresh to the
drama of it, unconscious that all eyes are watching him
furtively as a strange and wonderful being in clothes that
belong to the dreams of men who sleep in dug-outs.

The men who go out of those officers' clubs to the guns

THE APPROACHING MENACE 201

and the wagon-lines and the trenches and the observation
posts and the battalion and brigade headquarters, live a
good deal with dreams of the past or the future when this
present shall be finished. I met a captain yesterday, a
young Irishman, who dreams of the Blackwater river, near
Lismore, in the South of Ireland, where he used to get
salmon fishing, and of the time when once again he will
go along its banks with a rod in his hand. Meanwhile he
wants to know whether there is trout in the Somme or the
Canche, so that he may have a little of the sport he loves
best in the world when his battalion is resting behind the
lines.

The Irish battalions are in good form again after their
hard fighting in Flanders, and on the left of Bullecourt,
where they took the Hindenburg tunnel trench in a quick
attack. On St. Patrick's Day, two days ago, they wore
shamrock in their caps, and the Irish pipers played to them,
and the padre said "God save Ireland, and may there be
peace there as well as here."

Yesterday I found a crowd of them gathered round to
watch a boxing-match in a field which the Jerry boys, as
they call the enemy, had once pounded with shells. Two
honest Irishmen prepared to knock each other about in a
spirit of brotherly love. The ring was in the open air,
like a scene in the old prize-fighting days, and the seconds
flapped towels into the faces of their champions and
sprinkled their bodies with water according to the best tra-
ditions. It was a hard fight, not without a show of red
blood from ears and noses, which aroused the laughter of
the onlookers and seemed to amuse the pugilists, but after
the fourth round the Game Chicken, who was a tough old
bird, was hopelessly done, and his adversary, who was
taller and longer in the reach, was more than his match.

"Time to end the fight," said the Irish brigadier. The
referee agreed. The seconds came into the ring and threw
up the sponge. The defeated man got most of the ap-

202 THE WAY TO VICTORY

plause, as one finds in good sporting company, and called
out a joke or two to his supporters to show he was none
the worse for his hammering.

So our men make the best of life each day while they
are waiting for the menace of death to speak from the
quietude of the German lines — the most frightful menace
that has ever threatened us.

PART III
THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE

The Storm Breaks

March 21
A German offensive against our front has begun. At
about five o'clock this morning the enemy began an intense
bombardment of our lines and batteries on a very wide
front — something like sixty miles — from the country south
of the Scarpe and to the west of Bullecourt in the neigh-
bourhood of Croisilles, and as far south as our positions
between St.-Quentin and our right flank on the Oise.

After several hours of this hurricane shelling, in which
it is probable that a great deal of gas was used with the
intention of creating a poison-gas atmosphere around our
gunners and forward posts, the German infantry advanced
and developed attacks against a number of strategical
points.

Among the places against which they seem to have di-
rected their chief efforts are Bullecourt — the scene of so
much hard fighting last year by the Australians, Scottish,
and London troops — Lagnicourt, and Noreuil (both west
of Cambrai), where they once before penetrated our lines
and were slaughtered in great numbers, the St.-Quentin
Ridge, which was on the right of the Cambrai fighting, the
two villages of Ronssoy and Hargicourt, south of the
Cambrai salient, and the country south of St.-Quentin.

It is impossible to say yet how far the enemy will en-

203

204 THE WAY TO VICTORY

deavour to follow up the initial movement of his troops
over any ground he may gain in the first rush, or with what
strength he will press forward his supporting divisions and
fling his storm troops into the struggle. But the attack al-
ready appears to be on a formidable scale, with a vast
amount of artillery and masses of men, and there is reason
to believe that it is indeed the beginning of the great of-
fensive advertised for so long a time and with such fero-
cious menaces by the enemy's agents in neutral countries.
If so it is a bid for a decisive victory on the Western Front,
at no matter what sacrifice, and with the fullest brutalities
of every engine of war gathered together during months
of preparation and liberated entirely for this front by the
downfall of Russia. To-day I can give no details of the
fighting, but will reserve all attempts to give a clear in-
sight into the situation until my next message, when out
of the hurricane of fire now spreading over sixty miles or
more of the battlefields there will come certain knowledge
of the fighting. At the moment there are only scraps of
news from one part of the Front and another, unconfirmed
rumours, reports of ground given or taken, and the vague
tidings of men hard pressed, but holding out against re-
peated onslaughts. It would be a wicked, senseless thing
to make use of these uncertain fragments from many
sources, and some hours must pass before it becomes clear
how much the enemy has gained by his first blow and how
much he has failed to gain against the heroic resistance of
our troops. The immediate endeavour of the enemy seems
obvious. It is an enlargement of his strategical plan in
the attack of November 30 against the lines we held after
the first Cambrai battle, and it covers the same ground, on
a much wider boundary. He appears to be assaulting both
wings of the salient between the Scarpe and the south end
of the Flesquieres Ridge in order to cut off all the inter-
vening ground, which includes Havrincourt Wood and
Velu Wood, the line south of Morchies and Beaumetz, and
a stretch of the country east and south-east of Bapaume,

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE

205

down to St.-Quentin and the Oise, which he abandoned to
us in his retreat last March after the battles of the Somme.

THE LINES OF RETREAT, MARCH 1918

By a rapid turning movement from both wings he would
hope to capture many of our men and guns. It is a men-

206 THE WAY TO VICTORY

ace which cannot be taken lightly, and at the present mo-
ment our troops are fighting not only for their own lives,
but also for the fate of England and all our race.

During the last few weeks I have been along the sectors
now involved in this battle, and have met the men who
to-day are fighting to hold their lines against the enemy's
storm troops under the fury of his fire. I have described
the spirit of those men of ours, their confidence, their
splendid faith, their quiet and cheerful courage, their lack
of worry until this hour should come, the curious incre-
dulity they had that the enemy would dare to attack them
because of the strength of their positions, and of our great
gun-power. But though many of them were incredulous
of a great attack, they had been fully warned and fully
trained, and were on the alert day and night. By labour
that never ceased on the northern side of the battle front,
they wired-in their positions with acres of wire and
strengthened their defences and made their gun-positions,
and wore their gas-masks so often and so long that it has
become a habit with them.

His attack to-day has been no surprise, for it has been
expected every day, though many people without evidence,
the amateur critic and the arm-chair strategist, have pro-
fessed to know that it was all bluff, without the same ex-
cuse of courage which made some of our men doubtful,
though upon them would fall the brunt of it. It is not
bluff, so far as to-day's battle shows, but appears to be the
real thing in all its brutal force. Many thousands of our
men are engaged in defence and counter-attack, and the
one thing that should be certain is their supreme valour,
whatever may happen. They will fight to the death to safe-
guard our lines, and whatever ground the enemy may take
in his first assaults will have to be paid for by enormous
sacrifice and held, if held at all, against counter-attacks
which our men will make with most fierce and obstinate
spirit.

The heart of all the people of our race must go out to

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 207

these battalions of boys upon whom our destiny depends,
and who now, while I write, are making a wall with their
bodies against the evil and the power of our enemy.

March 22
The enemy made no infantry attack last night, but heavy
fighting is now being resumed after the lifting of the fog
this morning, and our troops are heavily engaged on the
right of our line near St.-Quentin.

The beginning of his offensive yesterday was on a co-
lossal scale, not only in the width of his line of attack,
which extended for fifty miles, apart from the area of gun-
fire, but in the numbers of his men and guns. He flung
the full weight of a mighty army against us, closely
crowded and in depth of supporting troops, who advanced
in mass after mass. Nearly forty divisions have already
been identified, and it is certain that many more have been
engaged. In proportions of men we were enormously out-
numbered, so that our troops have had extremely hard
fighting, and for this reason the obstinacy of their resist-
ance in many parts of the line is a wonderful feat, and
shows how splendid is their courage and discipline under
the fiercest ordeal which has ever faced British soldiers.

Nine German divisions were hurled against three of ours
at one part of the line — the 34th, 59th, and 6th Divisions
on each side of Bullecourt — while in another part two of
our divisions — the 41st and 19th, between Queant and
Doignies — were attacked by eight of the enemy's. They
were all German storm troops, among them the Guards,
trained for many months past for this great assault. They
were all, so our men tell me, in brand-new uniforms, as
though they were entering the war zone for the first time,
and they advanced over No Man's Land in dense masses
which never faltered until they were shattered by our ma-
chine-gun fire, and they were followed by successive waves.

"They were like bees out of a hive," said a young sol-
dier who saw them crossing the open country within 400

208 THE WAY TO VICTORY

yards of him. "The more one shot down the more seemed
to come." It was a return to the old methods of the Ger-
man army in the early days of the war at Mons and La
Cateau, and afterwards at Verdun. Indeed, it is surpris-
ing that the enemy has introduced no novelty of attack, no
new frightfulness, no Tanks, no specially invented gas. He
relied yesterday morning on the power of his artillery and
the weight of his infantry assault. What wire was not
cut by his guns was attacked by the snipers of his assault
troops, standing in front of the wire, spaced by their of-
ficers, and mown down repeatedly by our fire. The sup-
porting waves advanced over the bodies of their dead and
wounded, and other masses came behind them, and the
German commanders were ruthless in the way they sacri-
ficed life in the hope of overwhelming our defence by sheer
weight of numbers. They had an exceeding power in guns.
Opposite three of our divisions they had iooo, and in most
parts of the line one gun to every twelve or fifteen yards
of front. In spite of the tremendous bombardments of
this war nothing has ever been experienced by British
troops like the length and width of the barrage laid down
upon our defensive positions yesterday morning at five
o'clock, and continued throughout the day without a pause,
except to jump forward to let the infantry attack and the
guns advance. Each battalion of Germans was provided
with a heavy number of trench-mortars dug into their
trenches, and it was with these that they did most of their
wire cutting during a four hours' fire. At the same time
they concentrated most of their heavy guns upon our bat-
tery positions, ammunition dumps, roads of communica-
tion, and villages in the back areas. They had brought up
a number of long-range guns, probably naval guns from
their Grand Fleet, and their shell-fire was scattered as far
back as twenty-eight miles behind the lines.

It was during the last hour of the bombardment that
they poured out gas shells, and they continued to concen-
trate gas about our batteries and reserve trenches through-

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 209

out the day, so that they filled the atmosphere with poison-
ous clouds. With this last weapon they failed to achieve
the success for which they had hoped. Our men had been
trained for many weeks, as I have described in other mes-
sages, to work for long stretches in their gas-masks, and
this was of priceless help to them yesterday, when they
were put to a supreme test of endurance. Many of our men
had their masks on for hours, and fought in them. One
man told me that his battalion on the left of the attack
wore them from four o'clock in the morning until mid-
day. Other men wore them for three and four hours at a
stretch, and then were only relieved of them by being
wounded and carried down behind the lines. Gunners also
worked in them, carrying up ammunition to the batteries,
laying the guns and firing with these nozzles over their
mouths and noses, and these goggles on their eyes. It
was an absolute proof of the efficacy of our box respirators.
Very few men received the poison into their lungs and
eyes, and there were only six cases this morning in one of
our largest casualty clearing-stations which receives the
wounded from a wide area. It is with deep thankfulness
that this may be recorded, for the enemy's terrible prophe-
cies of a gas which would penetrate our masks have been
proved false.

The main object of the enemy's attack on the left of the
battle- front against the 6th and 4th Corps was to bite off
the Bullecourt salient and pierce through our three main
lines of defence below Croisilles and St. Leger, and turn
the line so that he could capture Henin Hill with his old
Hindenburg tunnel trench. It seems to have been at three
minutes past five exactly yesterday morning that his bom-
bardment opened in depth with terrific storms of high ex-
plosives, followed by gas shelling. He put special con-
centrations of fire on the ruined villages of Croisilles,
Ecoust, and other places in back areas. At 8.45 the enemy
was reported to be forcing through our outpost lines, but
he was driven out on the extreme left by an immediate

210 THE WAY TO VICTORY

counter-attack by the 59th, 34th, and 6th Divisions. Later
it was reported that masses of men were advancing to the
left of Bullecourt, and our aviators, who were flying very
low on account of the white mists which were rising from
the ground like smoke, reported that they had seen our
men standing to in their trenches, and the enemy thickly
packed in the trenches to the north of Bullecourt. They
never made ground on the extreme left by the old Hin-
denburg line, and a very gallant division of men drove them
back when they attempted to cross No Man's Land, bombed
them out when they entered a forward trench, and did not
lose a foot of their ground.

A little to the right of them the Bullecourt salient was
utterly smothered with fire and filled with flame and smoke
and earth, like one vast volcano. No wire could stand that
storm of explosives, and no man could hold such a posi-
tion. In all parts of our line such a state of things had
been to some extent foreseen, and our outposts — such of
them as remained alive or uncaptured after the opening of
the storm — were able to fall back upon battle positions to
the rear, where there was a stronger defensive system, and
time to rally for counter-attacks against the enemy, who
had to come over the open under our fire with the great dif-
ficulty of bringing forward his guns. This was done wher-
ever possible, the men retiring in good order and with mag-
nificent courage, under the enemy's barrage, and when the
enemy followed on, bringing forward his light artillery
with the support lines of infantry, our guns slashed down
his ranks and left masses of dead on the field. Our airmen
all report that they have seen large numbers of German
dead heaped up amidst the debris of our wire and in the
open ground. But still they came on with a most fanatical
courage of sacrifice, and when the first lines fell their places
were filled up by others, and our guns and machine-gun fire
could not kill them fast enough.

By about midday there had been hard fighting in or
about the ruins of Bullecourt, Ecoust and Noreuii. Early

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 211

in the afternoon the enemy were seen, to the number of
about 3000, in a sunken road between Noreuil and Lagni-
court, and sheltered in deep shell-holes near those places
which were once villages, but now, as you must understand,
are merely barren sites on which only a few bricks stand.
This meant that the troops holding part of the ground
round Noreuil had been pushed back, and that after a strong
and heroic defence the survivors had had to fall back
towards the line of Beaumetz, Morchies, and Vaulx. At
half-past five in the afternoon the enemy made another at-
tack in massed formation, crowding down the slopes of the
Sensee valley from Cherisy and Fontaine Wood, striking
down to the north of Vaulx and trying to press forward
all along this left line of the attack. Our gunners fired
into them with open sights, cutting swathes in their ranks
and checking their tide of assault. When darkness fell
they had not as yet gained anything like the objectives
marked out for them on their maps, as we know from those
captured, and during the night they made no further at-
tempt.

This morning there was fierce fighting round St. Leger,
and our troops took some prisoners and four machine-guns.
Up to the time I write I know of no further attack on this
left side of the battle-front.

From Noreuil eastwards from Lagnicourt round the
bend of the Cambrai salient the fighting was of the same
intensity. The enemy by great sacrifices of life was able
to penetrate our first defensive system in the neighbour-
hood of Lagnicourt, Boursies, and Hargicourt, against the
66th and 24th Divisions. A number of Tanks made a bril-
liant counter-attack before dark last evening and recaptured
some ground near Doignies. The defence of our men on
the Third Army Front was everywhere splendid, and the
German High Command, flushed with victories over weak-
er troops on other fronts such as their easy victories in Rus-
sia, have been taught that on the Western Front they must

212 THE WAY TO VICTORY

pay a frightful price for any gain of ground, however small
and unavailing.

A specially heavy attack was made yesterday by six
German divisions on one British division south of St.-
Quentin. Here along the line of Itancourt, Barisis, and
La Fere, on the Oise, we had the 14th, 18th, and 58th
(London) Divisions; and north of the 14th (Light Infan-
try) Division was the 36th (Ulster) Division. Here the
enemy penetrated our positions, and after desperate fight-
ing the British line was withdrawn to the strong position
behind the canal, between St.-Quentin and the Oise.

In spite of the extremely hard fighting yesterday, the
spirit of our men remains good, and some of them are
proud of their achievements in having checked the first
onrush of this massed attack, upon which all German hopes
were fastened. They know what lies ahead — fighting just
as hard — but the supporting troops I saw to-day going up
to the battle were chatting and smiling among themselves
with a calm confidence which was wonderful to see. Their
bands were playing them up as though on a day of festival,
and none but those who know our men in bad times and
good would have believed that these lads were going into
the greatest struggle of the war.

The lightly wounded men have only one interest; it is
to know how the day has gone, and when I told them that
the British Army was still holding together, they said
"Thank goodness for that."

They are all convinced that the enemy's losses are very
great. "We were tired of killing them," said a gunner
who had fired into their masses with open sights, and they
hope that the enemy will break himself if he continues at
the same rate of loss.

March 23
The enemy has been continuing his attacks all day along
the whole of the battle-front, and has made further prog-
ress at various points, in spite of the heroic resistance of

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 213

our troops. Greatly outnumbered, owing to the enormous
concentration of enemy divisions, constantly reinforced and
passing through each other, so that fresh regiments may
pursue the assaults, our men have been fighting bitterly for
three days, and have inflicted severe losses at every part
of the battle-line, so that where the enemy has advanced
he has passed on through many of his own dead and
wounded. But, in view of the enemy breaking through
our defensive systems, our divisions have fallen back to
new ground. They have done this under the continuous
and increasing pressure of the enemy, and along many parts
of the line their movement has been covered by rear-guard
actions of most glorious heroism, small bodies of men some-
times sacrificing themselves to the last in order to gain
time for their comrades, and though entirely surrounded
in some cases by the German storm troops, have defended
the redoubts and outposts for many hours, afterwards pour-
ing out machine-gun fire upon the advancing waves and
raking their ranks.

So it was yesterday round Henin Hill, for which the
enemy fought with desperate obstinacy, sending forward
column after column of men from Lagnicourt and Croisilles
under the fire of our artillery, which slaughtered them in
large numbers, and against those machine-gunners of ours
on the hill and in neighbouring positions. Our infantry
did wonders in defending this hill, which guards the way
of the Scarpe Valley, and here, as I shall tell later, there
was intense and prolonged fighting yesterday and to-day,
in which our men withstood the repeated onslaughts of vast
numbers, holding out and counter-attacking with an un-
conquerable spirit to death.

So it was also on the right and in the centre of our bat-
tle-front to-day, and since the beginning of those tremen-
dous actions three mornings ago. Until now I have been
able to tell very little about what has happened on the right,
because the situation north and south of St.-Ouentin was
utterly vague and uncertain and in a state of confused move-

214 THE WAY TO VICTORY

ment. Today I have been on the right, and can now give
a narrative of the southern part of the battle.

It began, as along the whole sweep of the battle, with
six hours' bombardment and intense gas shelling of our
batteries, and afterwards an attack was launched by over-
whelming numbers of German storm troops. Our battle-
line was held by some three divisions — the 6ist, 30th, and
36th (Ulster) — from a point south of Pontruet to Itan-
court, south of the St.-Quentin Canal. Along this sector
the enemy line had been held before the attack by three di-
visions also, but the night before the battle they were re-
inforced until eight German divisions were massed there.
They were ready for assault with eight divisions against
eight battalions, one division against a battalion of ours on
a front of some 2000 yards. I believe it is greater strength
than has ever been brought into battle on such a narrow
front during the whole of this war.

By the splendid work of our Intelligence Corps it was
known that the attack was coming and that the enemy had
assembled, and advantage was taken of this knowledge to
pour a heavy fire over the enemy lines during the night and
to sweep with gas the town of St.-Quentin, in which his
troops were crowded. This, as we know from prisoners,
caused him heavy casualties, though it did not suffice to
break up his organization and plans. The position of some
of our batteries was slightly changed to avoid the German
bombardment at dawn, and this was effective, as the enemy
poured a frightful fire of high explosives on to these em-
placements, which were then empty. But a number of
field-batteries were left in order to cover any withdrawal
of our outpost line, and these heroic gunners served their
batteries to the last, until the enemy had swept over them.

On this sector of the Front, north and south of St.-
Quentin and opposite our line further south, the enemy's
intention, as we know from prisoners, was to reach the
line of the St.-Quentin Canal (or Crozat Canal as it is some-
times called) on the first day, and then advance in quick

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 215

stages westwards, the rate of progress to be eight miles on
the first day, twelve on the second, and twenty on the third.
In spite of their intense gun-fire of massed batteries, sup-
ported by Austrian howitzers and large numbers of heavy
trench-mortars, the enemy plans were thwarted as far as
this rapidity of progress was concerned. The heavy fog
of the early morning on Thursday threw his assault troops
at some points into wild confusion. His first line of as-
sault— each division apparently advancing with two regi-
ments in line, each with two battalions in line, with other
strength of the division following in depth, with light ma-
chine-gun companies at intervals of ioo yards, and then
heavy machine-guns and field artillery — sometimes became
hopelessly mixed up with the third and fourth lines, while
the right battalions were confused with their left battal-
ions. This fog checked the pace of their onslaught for a
time, but only for a time. The enemy's troops were ut-
terly ignorant of the line. They were brought up in the
night from a long distance behind, and even the officers
had only sealed orders and a scrap of map marked with a
green line, showing their objectives.

The German High Command relied entirely on weight of
guns and man-power to break our resistance, and the driv-
ing power of the whole monstrous machine in movement.
To this he does, indeed, owe the progress he has made.
Our line was not strong enough to hold its old positions
against such a tide. Our men served their guns and their
rifles, but as attack followed attack, and column followed
column, and their own losses increased, while the hours
passed they were ordered to give ground and fall back,
fighting those heroic rear-guard actions from one position
to another.

The main attack just south of St.-Quentin was directed
against Urvillers and Essigny, and the enemy forced his
way through these places, between the 36th Ulster and
14th (Light Infantry) Divisions, by great drives. Our
garrisons there were partly destroyed by his stupendous

216 THE WAY TO VICTORY

gun-fire. He gained possession of Essigny before midday
on March 21, and captured Contescourt on the edge of the
canal. This gave him important high ground, of which
he made full use. He succeeded by this movement in
breaking our line at the right flank of the Ulster Division,
north of the canal, which he crossed hereabouts, and by
advancing his field artillery was able to bombard the line
to which the main body of our troops had been withdrawn
down from Maissemy and Holnon Wood to Savy and
Roupy. He pressed forward against this line, but mean-
while several detached companies of our men were holding
out in redoubts entirely surrounded by the enemy. They
were defended by machine-guns, and had supplies of food
for forty-eight hours. In one near St.-Quentin, in another
near Grugies, and many others southwards past Fort de
Liez to La Fere, these companies of men, English and Irish,
Buffs at Fort Vendheuil, and men of the 2nd London Regi-
ment in the keep at La Fere, held out, saw the enemy
streaming past them, knew that they were cut off, but would
not retreat. Some of them maintained their fire till eve-
ning, and then, with machine-gun ammunition spent, or
nearly spent, tried to fight their way through. Many did
not succeed in this heroic adventure, but by their service
will always be remembered in our history. They checked
the enemy progress, and gave their comrades a greater
chance.

Later on in the first day of battle the enemy reached
the village of Grand Seraucourt, and the high ground south
of St.-Quentin Canal, which dominates positions on the
other bank. He was fighting there all night and yester-
day morning ; his eight divisions, against our splendid hard-
pressed three, were supported by still two more. The main
enemy attack was between Roupy and the canal, and all
day yesterday the German attack continued, our men fight-
ing ceaselessly. The enemy forced his way past the vil-
lages of Artemps and St.-Simon in desperate endeavours
to gain the canal crossings, and about midday yesterday

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 217

directed a column against Tugny, east of Ham, to capture
the bridgehead. Meanwhile, further north the security of
our three divisions on this ©sector was threatened by an
enemy advance on their left, and it was decided to* withdraw
to a line further back.

One brigade of the 20th Division was sent up to hold
the bridgehead at Tugny, and two other units of the same
division were sent forward to cover our divisions as they
fell back. They did this with glorious gallantry, and late
last night those of their number who had been acting as
the last rear-guards made their way back after many hours
of battle. One body of troops from the 61st Division
counter-attacked with marvellous spirit, and regained the
village of Villecholles, and could have held it for a long
time had they not been ordered to conform to the general
movement. All through to-day (Saturday) the enemy
pressed forward towards our battle-line, and it is reported
that his cavalry have been seen on roads north-east of Ham.

The town of Ham, through which I have passed several
times lately on the way to the lines in all this country
through which the enemy is fighting, was evacuated yes-
terday of all civilians. Not one of them would risk fall-
ing into German hands a second time, for it was just a
year ago that they were liberated from the enemy by his
retreat.

On the southern sector of our front, between Itancourt
and La Fere, were Londoners and Rifle Brigades and Sur-
reys and Kents and men of the Home Counties, belong-
ing to the 58th (London) and 18th Divisions. It was along
that line of country, which I have described in recent arti-
cles, when I went to Fort de Liez and the woods about
Barisis and looked across the marshes of the Oise to La
Fere and Massif de St.-Gobain, and found everything quiet
there.

"When is this battle going to begin?" said an officer of
the London Regiment. That was nearly a month ago, and
it began on Thursday morning. Opposite our line north

218 THE WAY TO VICTORY

of the River Oise the enemy assembled four divisions. Then
there came a gap where there are marshes, and south of
that there was another division and three Jaeger battal-
ions, and south of La Fere a Landwehr regiment. The
enemy was so densely massed that there was a division on
about a kilometre of front. None of them were spread
out on more than two kilometres a division, with a bat-
talion for every 500 yards. There was no attack across the
marshes, but the enemy struck at Moy, opposite Hamegi-
court, on the Oise Canal, and then turned his effort on the
north of Vendheuil to our line at Ly-Fontaine.

The German 47th Reserve Division started from La
Fere and swung past Fargniers to the Fort of Liez, which
stands on a small hill, with dismantled walls and strong
underground shelters in which our London men used to
sleep when in support.

It was the Jaeger battalion which attacked Quessy and
Fargniers, south of that fort, and there was a raid by the
60th Landwehr Regiment over the marshes at La Fere.
During the night they built four bridges and a dam over
the river, and then fired a number of gas projectors, but
our men saw them, shattered them with machine-gun and
field-gun fire, so that they had to be withdrawn. It was
only a small episode in a larger plan. German storm troops
were able to force their way to Vendheuil, Ly-Fontaine,
and Benay, south of Essigny, and to strike against Jussy
and Terguier on the St.-Quentin Canal. On the evening
of the first day they brought up two more divisions, and
that night, owing to the pressure of their attacks, it was
decided that we should withdraw to a prepared line fur-
ther west, which was our best defence. This was done
during darkness, the retirement being covered by gallant
rear-guards. All through the day several redoubts were
held in front of our main battle-line by similar companies
of brave men as those further north. A company of the
Buffs held out in Fort Vendheuil until four o'clock in the
afternoon, though entirely surrounded, and a company of

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 219

men of the 2nd London Regiment held out, opposite La
Fere against all odds, with the enemy far ahead of them
and with but slender hope of breaking through to our new
line of defence. These rear-guard posts and the marvel-
lous discipline and valour of all our infantry, who fought
until their lines were weak and until many dead and
wounded lay around them, prevented the enemy from get-
ting beyond Essigny and Benay on the first day. It is
probable, also, that the confusion into which he had been
thrown by fog also hampered his movements, and it is cer-
tain that he was deeply distressed by the severity of his
losses. Yesterday he renewed the attack, pressing for-
ward wherever he could find a weak place, and making des-
perate efforts to gain crossings at Terguier and Jussy.
There was fierce and bloody fighting at Jussy, where one
of our brigades counter-attacked impetuously, hurling Ger-
man troops out of that place, and killing many of them.
However, the enemy was able to effect a crossing and so
get to the left bank of the canal.

On the evening of yesterday — that is, Friday — the Ger-
mans brought up still another division, the 223rd, and
these fresh troops did not relieve those engaged already,
but leap-frogged, as it is called — that is, passed through
them to new objectives. This morning they followed up
our withdrawal by clearing up all the ground in the bend
formed by the acute angle of the St.-Quentin Canal, which
has its apex at Tugny, six kilometres east of Ham, and it
was reported that patrols entered the town of Ham itself.
Another report came through, though it proved to be un-
true, that this morning the enemy troops were reported
advancing in the neighbourhood of Ham to Guiscard. All
the servants of a headquarters staff were gathered together,
cooks and orderlies and transport men, and sent up the
road to hold it. It proved unnecessary, as I know from
personal experience, for I went into Guiscard this morn-
ing and met no Uhlans thereabouts, though they were re-
ported, truly I believe, to have been seen round Ham.

220 THE WAY TO VICTORY

On the second day of the battle I was at the point of
liaison with the French troops, and I saw some of their
regiments ready for action. It was a splendid thing to
see the sky blue of this army. The poilus were magnifi-
cent-looking men, hard and bronzed, and in good spirit.
Some of their officers discussed the situation with me, and
said, "We shall hold them and give them a good biff when
the time comes, as on the day of the Marne." They were
anxious for news about the enemy's latest positions. They
shook hands and saluted with comradely smiles, and said
"Good luck to us both." "If we act together," said one
of them, "we are bound to win."

French poilus watched our infantry and gunners, and
all the turmoil of our traffic, with intense interest, and were
surprised at the calm, cheerful way in which our men be-
haved in these hours of crisis.

"Your Tommies are imperturbable," said one of the
French officers. Certainly, nothing in this war has been
more splendid than the way in which, all along the line,
many of our troops have fought every mile of their way
back to the positions we now hold, under stupendous fire
and tide after tide of those field-grey men pouring over
the slopes and crowding down the roads.

I have told briefly what happened on the right of the
battle. Further north, in the Cambrai salient, the defence
by our troops was just as heroic, and in spite of inevitable
withdrawal under incessant attack they held strong lines
which the enemy has vainly tried to pierce, and are still
holding to-day.

Southwards from Bullecourt the lines were held by the
6th and 51st (Highland) Divisions from Noreuil to
Doignies; by the 17th, 63rd (Naval), and 47th (London)
from Doignies to Gouzeaucourt ; by the 66th and 24th from
Gouzeaucourt to Maissemy; and by the 61st and 30th from
Maissemy to the St.-Quentin Canal. Among the support-
ing troops who were sent forward to the help of these di-

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 221

visions were the 41st, 19th, 25th, 2nd, 50th, and 20th Di-
visions.

On the first day of the attack in the centre of the battle-
front, the depth of the enemy bombardment was so great
that it reached as far back as Vaux and Velu. We knew
his attack was coming. Intense area shoots, which de-
stroyed some of his batteries, blew up some of his dumps
and caused him great losses. But he had brought up no
new batteries, and had at least 700 guns on this short sec-
tor of the Front, so that his fire was violent and destruc-
tive.

Although on the right, fog confused the enemy, owing
to the width of No Man's Land, further north it was in
his favour, as our machine-guns in enfilade positions could
not see his advancing infantry until they were quite close.
It also veiled the attack from our forward observers. One
of them telephoned to headquarters some time after the
battle was launched. His words over the 'phone were
dramatic as he saw the enemy draw near. Presently he
said, "Enemy is streaming behind us," and his next mes-
sage was, "I shan't be able to speak much longer." Then
there was a crash, and after that silence.

The enemy's gun-fire with quick-time fuse destroyed
much of our wire, and the rest was forced by sheer weight
of human bodies. Our front and support lines were
smashed into a chaos of earth, and German storm troops
took them without much delay. They were lightly held,
and the English and Scottish survivors fell back on the
main battle-line.

The enemy's waves still came on, mown down by our
machine-gunners at short range, and by our field artillery
firing with open sights and laying their guns on to the
ranks. Their dead and wounded were piled up in heaps,
but this did not check for long the dense masses that fol-
lowed for further sacrifice.

There was intense fighting round Lagnicourt and Demi-
court, the last two villages on this line to hold out, and

2£2 THE WAY TO VICTORY

the Highlanders of the 51st Division fought, as always in
this war, with immortal heroism. When their flank on the
left was exposed a battalion of Seaforths covered the with-
drawal of the other troops, regardless of their own lives,
against the hordes of the enemy. They held the position
even when the enemy brought up two field-guns and fired
into them at point-blank range. This last stand of the
Seaforths enabled our men on the left to gain their de-
fensive line, and only a few men came back after that deed
of glorious endurance.

Heavy German attacks were launched all day against
our reserve line in this sector, and dead were crowded upon
dead before they could force our troops of the 40th and
59th Divisions to further withdrawal, first to Vaux, Mer-
chies, and Beaumetz, and on Friday to the neighbourhood
of the old German line. Yesterday there were strong at-
tacks again, all along this line, but the enemy made no
progress and bled his foremost troops to death against our
defence.

There was continuous fighting in and out of the village
of Mory all last night, as on the preceding days, the enemy
endeavouring to get this place in order to drive down on
the Arras-Bapaume road. This village of Mory was de-
fended first by English troops — Staffords and Middlesex,
Lincolns and Leicesters of the 59th Division — and after-
wards by the Royal Scots Fusiliers, Highland Light in-
fantry, and other Scottish troops. Mory was lost and re-
taken several times. The 1st Battalion of Leicesters were
surrounded there, and fought their way out with extraor-
dinary gallantry after severe losses. Afterwards the
enemy was surrounded in the village and many killed, and
last night Highlanders and Lowlanders swept through the
village and recaptured the trenches east of it.

A company of Leicesters held Vaucelette Farm, near
Epehy, though entirely surrounded, and would not surren-
der, so that they were either killed or captured. Another
battalion was surrounded at Pezieres, and after fighting all

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 223

day and sweeping- the enemy with machine-gun fire, made
a gallant effort to fight their way through two lines of Ger-
mans. Some of them succeeded, and hacked their way
back to our lines.

Meanwhile, on the left of the battle-line, between
Monchy and Bullecourt, there was desperate fighting, the
enemy flinging in new reserves and passing regiment
through regiment to force his way forward at any cost.
After taking Bullecourt and Croisilles on the first day, he
directed the chief effort of his thrust against Henin Hill,
with further attacks on Vaulx, Vraucourt, Beugnatre, and
St.-Leger, against our hard-tried 40th Division. For all
these places there were most bloody battles, and on the
afternoon of Friday we were still holding Beugnatre sugar
factory and Vaux-Vraucourt. At half-past four one of
our staff officers walked through that village to see the
situation himself, and found our men still there, refusing
to surrender it, though the enemy was working round it
and threatening to cut it off. At 5.50 there were more
attacks, and the enemy made a supreme effort, so that all
roads from Lagnicourt, Croisilles, and Fontaine Wood
were crowded with his advancing columns. Our 3rd Di-
vision repulsed all attacks, but the 34th Division on the
right, at Henin Hill, were compelled to withdraw, being too
weak to attack further. Twelve machine-guns, with their
teams, held the hill with a girdle of fire until the retirement
was complete, though the enemy was swarming about its
slopes like packs of wolves. Last night it was decided to
withdraw from Monchy, and this movement was made
without knowledge of the enemy, who did not discover it
until three hours after the last man was away. There were
no fewer than ten attacks yesterday against Vaux Vrau-
court, and the enemy brought up his cavalry in case the line
was pierced. But they could not break through, and there
was great slaughter of men and horses by our machine-
gunners.

224 THE WAY TO VICTORY

March 24
I have further news to-day of what has happened on the
right of our battle-front since I wrote the first part of this
message. After breaking across the Oise and the canal
of St.-Quentin, the German troops pressed on hard, in
spite of frightful losses, and swamped several of the ruined
villages, which they destroyed in their retreat from these
places a year ago. East of Peronne there was violent
fighting. In the neighbourhood of Ham they fought their
way through some of the woods thereabout, and their ad-
vanced lines tried to force their way on towards the old
positions held by them before they withdrew to St.-Quen-
tin in the early days of last year. That is the position to-
day, and after three days of most terrible slaughter they
are now weakening in their power of attack, and slowing
down the pace of their advance. All our men and their
own prisoners agree that their losses have been on the
highest scale, as high as 50 per cent, in some divisions, 75
per cent, in several battalions, and hardly less than 30
per cent, among any of the attacking units. One prisoner
says that out of his company of 258 only 50 remain alive.
We know of several cases like this, and they show clearly
enough that the enemy has paid a stupendous price for his
gain of ground. It is ground which he has himself laid
waste with absolute destruction, and there is no cover for
his men, and no standing towns in the battle area except
at Ham, which is only half ruined. His men, sent out into
the blue with two days' iron rations, are now hungry and
exhausted and dazed by their long struggle against our
heroic men. They say that the offensive was begun as an
act of desperation because Germany must have peace, and
in spite of their progress over a wide front, they are de-
pressed because they do not see decisive victory. Their
first day's battle enabled them, by storms of fire, to swamp
and break through our first lines of defence, and on the
second day they were able to maintain a heavy, though
weaker fire on our positions, and pursue their advance by

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 225

weight of their enormous numbers of men, flung into the
attack regardless of all price in life and blood. On the
third day their gun-power weakened again, and their troops
showed signs of great exhaustion. Since this morning
they have been held, and have made no great progress.

It seems certain now that our armies are able to control
the situation within the limits of ultimate safety, though
our losses in men are inevitably severe, and the situation
still requires all our abilities in strategy and generalship.
Our armies are holding good lines, and the blackest shad-
ows are beginning to lift. The weather is hot and brilliant
in sunshine, and on this Palm Sunday there is a deep blue
sky above all this blood and strife.

II

Heroic Rearguards

March 25
Yesterday the enemy continued his efforts to advance,
and there was fierce fighting by his troops to gain the cross-
ings over the Somme, south of Peronne, while at the same
time trying to break a way through the defences of Ba-
paume. On the Somme he flung across a pontoon bridge
and rafts, and his men tried to cross, but our field artillery,
firing at short range, smashed up many of these bridges
and killed his engineers and infantry. Gallant counter-
attacks by some of our men flung him back across the river
at several points, but elsewhere he held his crossings long
enough to put over his forces.

This morning two fresh German divisions attacked along
this part of the line south of Peronne, and our troops are
heavily engaged with them and holding them back as best
they can. All the fighting in this part of the country since
March 21 has been a continuous battle, in which many of
our divisions holding the front line below Gouzeaucourt to
Maissemy have shown magnificent powers of endurance,

226 THE WAY TO VICTORY

as, indeed, like all others engaged, and have only yielded
ground under the pressure of overwhelming numbers and
great gun-fire.

The Commander-in-Chief has mentioned specially the
24th Division for their defence of Le Verguier. Here, on
the second day of the battle, a small body of the Queen's
fought to the last man, refusing to retreat when surrounded,
and working their machine-guns until they were put out
of action. In their neighbourhood the Lancashire troops
of the 66th Division held out stubbornly, and with their
comrades of the 24th withstood the assault of seven Ger-
man divisions, who surged against them on the first morn-
ing after the colossal bombardment, and continued to press
them when they fell back from the front-line systems, fight-
ing desperately with little battles in woods and ruined
chateaux, such as Grandpriel Wood and Caubrieres
Chateau and Ferveque Farm, west of Hargicourt. The
enemy directed his thrust against Templeux Guerard,
gained high ground with observation, and fought forward
through the village of Ervillers.

There was a bloody struggle in some old chalk quarries,
where many German dead now lie, and after the enemy had
come some way forward ten of our Tanks drove into him
and shattered some of his battalions with their machine-
gun fire, dispersing groups of his advancing units. The
Tanks manoeuvred about, firing continually on each flank,
and causing terror among the enemy's foremost assault
troops. Our men fought a number of rear-guard actions,
and made many counter-attacks in the neighbourhood of
Roisel, and fell back to the line of the Somme only when
new masses of Germans passed through those battalions
which they had met and beaten.

Our field artillery and heavy guns were handled with
marvellous discipline in trying hours, and positions which
became untenable. Our gunners were firing hour after
hour at large bodies of Germans moving so close to them
that they were laid directly on to their targets, and caused

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 227

deadly losses in these ranks of field-grey men, who never
ceased to come forward in a living tide, at whatever cost
of life, and bore down our defensive lines by this ceaseless
tide. Some of our guns had to be abandoned, but many
of them were withdrawn to the other side of the Somme,
and the gunners were wonderful in the skill and courage
with which they made this passage and took up new posi-
tions and went into action again, like exhibition batteries
at Earl's Court.

By Saturday morning the German troops were ex-
hausted and spent, and in some parts of the line made no
further effort for a time, but halted to gain some sleep and
wait for fresh rations. On Saturday and Sunday our men,
who had had no rest from fighting, were reinforced and
given some relief, though many of them were again en-
gaged, and, weary as they were, put up new and gallant
fights against the enemy, who had also been reinforced by
greater numbers and came on again in their unending on-
slaught.

Some enemy cavalry were seen yesterday and to-day in
small bodies acting as scouts, and our own cavalry patrols
have met them and turned them back in the neighbourhood
of Ham and on the edge of the old Somme battlefields.

French infantry is also fighting shoulder to shoulder
with our men, and giving most gallant help to us. No
praise is too high for the way in which they have been
tried to the uttermost limits of human endurance and cour-
age in face of tremendous odds. Many of them have
fought isolated little battles and covered the general with-
drawal of the line at the deliberate sacrifice of their own
lives. All of them have fought hard though wearied by
incessant fatigue, lack of sleep, and the killing of the enemy.

Our Army now in these battlefields are dirty, unshaven
heroes, who snatch half an hour's sleep in any pause of the
fighting, and then get their rifles and machine-guns ready
for another bout. So I saw them this morning on the edge
of the old battlefield of the Somme. It was a strange and

228 THE WAY TO VICTORY

thrilling scene in country which for a time seemed liberated
from this black evil of war, after many battles which seem
old in history had been fought across it. It was country
from which the Germans had been beaten back in retreat.
There were our old deserted trenches, which Nature had
filled with long grass and weeds, and shell-craters of old
strife, in which wild flowers are growing, and shreds of
barbed wire on the edge of belts of ground which had once
been No Man's Land, and tumbled down dug-outs and sand-
bag emplacements rotted by frost, and the debris of infernal
conflict surrounding little cemeteries where sleep our dear
remembered dead. Old British trenches and old German,
were so mingled and upheaved that they could not be dis-
tinguished and on slopes and ridges were the thin gallows-
trees of woods like Delville Wood and High Wood, in
which our boys once fought under storms of fire which
slashed through these riven trunks. The tide of battle had
flowed away from these places to other fields. Now it had
come back again, and this morning it was astonishing to me
to stand there and see the bursting of shells again, and hear
the high whinnying cry of heavies travelling over these
ridges so long silent and abandoned, and the snarl of Ger-
man shrapnel flinging its bullets over this mangled earth
once more.

It was a battle scene of the old-fashioned kind as in the
early days of the war, when there was open fighting. Down
in the valley were our guns and patrols. Through the
morning mists the sunlight gleamed on the flanks of the
horses and on the steel hats of the men waiting for action
there. Our 18-pounders were firing at some woods on the
skyline, where the enemy was gathering, and their flashes
winked in the folds of the slopes. Patrols moved out to
establish contact with the enemy. I watched them go for-
ward up the winding road, deserted of all other traffic.
Some new batteries galloped up, unlimbered, and made
ready for action. The men saw to the laying of their guns
without hurry or nervousness, but with smart discipline.

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 229

Infantry were taking up positions among the old ruins.
Some of them stood about in groups, smoking and chatting.
After a cold night in the open they were still muffled up in
scarves, tied up to the ears under the steel hats, and hid
the grey look of men without much sleep, and for once in a
while the British i\rmy was unshaven, and there were
young faces covered with a four days' growth of beard,
giving them a more veteran look.

The commanding officer of a battery came up and spoke
a few cheerful words. He pointed to his guns, then to the
slopes ahead, and said, "I shall catch 'em when they come
down." Other officers came up and asked for the morn-
ing's news, or gave the latest they knew.

'The Germans seem tired," said one of them. "They're
not coming on so fast. Doggo, I guess."

Another officer laughed at these words as though at
some secret joke of his, and then said he was going as far
as he could up the sinister road ahead to make a forward
dressing-station. He was a doctor, but looked like a fight-
ing soldier in his helmet and muddy clothes.

A line of Tanks came crawling over the hill like enor-
mous slugs, moving very slowly — a good target for the
enemy guns, though not a shot was fired at them. The
enemy was not strong in guns in that forward outpost of
his among the naked masts of wood on the hill-crest. Some
of his shrapnel was bursting aimlessly, killing a few horses,
whose dead bodies lay about ; and presently he sent a number
of high-explosive 5.9's, I think, into two patches of ground
which were once villages — Montaufan and Mametz, but
are now rubbish-heaps, and along the upper end of that
sinister street which was ours at one end and his at the
other. Some of these crumps set our transport moving.
They galloped their old hairies down the road at a great
pace.

From below the edge of the woods where the enemy was
halted came a blast of machine-gun fire, sweeping in gusts
of bullets. Our outposts were at work, and the enemy

230 THE WAY TO VICTORY

was having a bad time, I think, in those woods. This scat-
tered fire became heavier, as though some more guns of his
were getting into action. The stage was set for another
battle.

Far behind the lines there were scenes of great activity
on the road — a long line of traffic, of marching men and
guns, against which beats another line of pioneers, labour
battalions, ambulances, and peasants' carts. German agents
have been spreading alarmist rumours among the villages
behind the lines, and some of the poor people there have
been persuaded to leave their homes and trek away to dis-
tricts more remote from war. As a contrast come bat-
talions of "Chinkies" moving to new quarters and grinning
as they go, in all manner of queer headgear, from pot-hats
to generals' field caps, above their Chinese uniforms.

Forward go our marching men without a shadow on their
faces, calm, resolute, undismayed by any rumour or bad
luck. It is a pageant of heroic youth and our heart beats
to, see them. It is their bodies and their spirit which stand
between us and a German victory. It is their courage which
will break down the enemy's onslaught in what may be the
second battle of the Somme.

March 27
Yesterday and to-day the enemy has not made further ad-
vances on a big scale between the Arras-Bapaume road on
the left of the battle-front and the village of Bray, on the
Somme, but has paused in his massed attacks in order to
reorganize his line and bring up his artillery. But he has
made cautious movements forward over the old Somme
battlefields, which have led to sharp fighting at various
points, and renewed losses to his assault troops.

It has been marvellously clear weather since the first
foggy morning of March 21, and though now much colder,
with a strong easterly wind, which is painful to our troops
at night in the open fields, our air squadrons have recon-
noitred, bombed, and machine-gunned his massed bat-

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 231

talions with constant audacity. They have reported heavy
concentrations of German storm troops behind Maurepas,
Ginchy, and Beugnatre, and the roads around Bapaume
have been crowded with men and guns and transport pass-
ing down through Le Sars, with German cavalry along the
Bapaume-Guedecourt road, and a steady drift downwards
to the town of Albert. That poor, stricken city of the
golden Virgin, head downwards, with a babe in her out-
stretched arms, which I have described so often in accounts
of the battles of the Somme in 191 6, when that falling
statue was lit up by shell-fire, was yesterday in the centre of
the fighting north of the Somme. The night before their
assault yesterday they bombed it heavily from the air, using
the brilliant moonlight, which lay white over all battlefields
and these roofs, to fly low and pick their targets wherever
they saw men moving or horses tethered. In several cases it
was not men they hit, but women and children, who when
the war seemed to have passed from this place a year ago
crept back to their homes and built little wooden booths in
which they sold papers and picture post cards to our troops.
Now suddenly war flamed over them again, and they were
caught before they could escape by these thunderbolts out
of that shining moonlight, terribly clear and revealing.
Dead horses lay about the ruined streets when I passed
through a morning ago. Our field-guns were passing be-
low the outstretched arms of the Virgin, and companies of
dusty, tired men of ours who took up positions beyond the
town below shell-pierced walls and in sunken roads to await
the enemy and make him pay the price of blood. Some
refugees were leaving their homes, lingering to pack up a
few bundles on barrows. Some of the children and old
people were weeping, but I noticed that the young girls
held themselves bravely, and smiled at our soldiers, as
though to say, "We also are not afraid."

Yesterday afternoon the enemy, who had been working
closer with his men and guns, in face of heavy machine-
gun and artillery fire, opened a fairly heavy bombardment

232 THE WAY TO VICTORY

on Albert and its neighbourhood. From the high ground
this side of Albert our observers could see an enemy
column coming over slopes south of the town by Meaulte,
where, on July i, 191 6, I saw our Indian cavalry sitting
like statues in the dark with their lances up, waiting for the
opening signal of our great battle, which began when the
vast mine-crater was blown at La Boiselle. That crater
was now on fire again with flash of bursting shells, and the
life of war had come back to these desolate fields, where for
a long time there has been the silence of death above many
graves.

To me nothing has been more startling in this war than to
see this renewal of strife on these old abandoned battle-
grounds, to see the enemy bombarding Fricourt and Ma-
metz, to hear the savage sweep of machine-gun fire by
Montauban and Delville Wood, and to watch our men lining
the fire-step in the trenches that were dug for battles two
years won or lost. Batteries I saw about the red-brick
ruins of Albert caught the enemy in the open and tore gaps
in his ranks, and our men poured rifle-fire at his advancing
waves as they came over the slopes. During the night all
our heavy guns in position flung high explosives over those
Somme battlefields, whose earth has been more mauled by
gun-fire than any ground in the world of war. The enemy's
massed troops were here without shelter or cover of any
kind, stretched on earth and sleeping if they could in the
tearing cold wind. This bombardment of ours must have
kept them awake, unless they were drunk with sleep, and
many men must have been killed as they lay still under
the high white moon. At the same time our flying raiders
went out, flew very low, so that their wings were loud
above the heads of the German bivouacs, and dropped
bombs into their masses and spilt machine-gun fire over
them, and knew by the turmoil and cries that they were
hurting and demoralizing the enemy. The Germans
retaliated in their own way by bombing open towns full
of civilians, and I was in one of them last night, nor far

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 233

from the lines now, when these night bombers came over
and dropped their engines of death. I have never seen
such moonlight in March. It was like a June night in
Southern France. Every roof was sharply defined by a
silver edge of light, and the walls of old houses were daz-
zling white and their shadows very black. There seemed
something devilish and cruel in that white light. Quite
early in the evening bombs began to fall, and all about took
cover, under shadows of old doorways. Raiders came
over all through the night. This was in Amiens, under
the great shadow of that cathedral, which in the moonlight
looked as insubstantial as a dream, with all its pinnacles
and buttresses white as snow.

The enemy now holds the line along the Ancre Valley,
up past Beaumont Hamel, Serre, and Puisieux, to east of
Ablainzeville to the Cojeul river by Boiry, past Henin and
Heninel. South of that his line runs from Meaulte to
the neighbourhood of Bray-on-the-Somme, and so south-
wards to Estrees.

There was hot fighting yesterday at different times of the
day near Auchonvillers and in Hamel village, where the
enemy tried to break a way through to Mesnil. This at-
tack was beaten off, and our men made prisoners of two
officers and eleven other ranks. One of his outposts pushed
out to Aveluy Wood — how strange to write again the old
and famous names in the first Somme battles — but were
driven back with loss by one of our patrols. There was
also an attack on the village of Sailly-le-Sec, but after
seizing it the enemy was beaten out by a counter-attack.
One of his air pilots was captured alive in his machine.
As always happens in open warfare of this kind and at
such a time, many rumours travel quickly down the roads,
and yesterday was thick with them. It was reported that
the enemy had broken through at a certain place with
armoured cars, but our officers quickly took the situation
in hand and found that the line was firmly held.

Elsewhere it was reported that the Germans had taken

234 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Hebuterne, near Gommecourt, but a staff officer climbed a
tree and saw that this also was a myth, and that Hebuterne
and its old orchard, where strange birds went whining
among the trees when I went there first three years ago,
were still in our hands, and that no attack had been launched
here.

All attacks about Ablainzeville and on our left flank have
been repulsed with heroic steadiness. Up on this northern
part of the battle they are now putting in divisions for the
second time, those used in the first fighting, and that is a
good sign. It indicates also that the main attack is press-
ing south of the Somme. The enemy's strength of attack
does not seem so great for the time being as on the first
three or four days, and there is no doubt from what prison-
ers say that his men are suffering under the strain and
horror of their losses and fatigue. But the battles are by
no means over, and this is only a pause before renewed
assaults.

Ill

Arras to the Somme

March 28
After a short pause for reorganizing his divisions and
bringing up guns and supplies, the enemy is again attacking
at various points and seems to be preparing for new as-
saults in mass.

His main thrusts are directed now against Arras, north
and south of the Scarpe, and from his positions immediately
north of the Somme, where he is in villages this side of
Bray and Cerisy, striking out towards Mericourt and
Sailly-le-Sec. It is on the left bank of the battle-line, north
of the River Scarpe, that his menace is for the moment
greatest, and he seems to have side-slipped some of his
force northwards in order to strike a heavy blow there,
having failed to turn our left in the original attack, owing

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 235

to the splendid resistance of the 3rd Division and other
English troops. This battle is now in progress, the fight-
ing being very intense. Before the German infantry ad-
vanced, our lines from the village of Bailleul, near Oppy,
southwards to Boiry, were under hurricane bombardments,
starting at 5.50 this morning, and then German storm
troops moved forward with many machine-guns.

Our artillery and rifle fire made a target of them, so that
large numbers fell, but their gaps were filled up by succeed-
ing waves, and they forced their way forward to some
extent in the neighbourhood of Orange Hill, from which
they were driven in the Battle of Arras in April of last
year. There is also fierce fighting round Telegraph Hill,
another point of vantage from which our men struggled in
that battle a year ago. The enemy has brought up a num-
ber of high-velocity long-range guns in this district, and is
bombarding villages and camps far behind our lines.

Yesterday he was feeling our strength by small actions
at various points west of the Arras-Bapaume road, and this
developed into serious engagements here and there. His
object was to draw his line westwards and to gain high
ground around the villages of Ayette, Bucquoy, and
Puisieux, but although he compelled our troops to with-
draw slightly, he did not make much progress. Counter-
attacks by our men flung him back and strewed the ground
with his dead and wounded, especially about the village of
Ablainzeville, and this place is still held by us. In the late
afternoon there was sharp attacks south-west of Boyelle,
and after being repulsed with most bloody losses, the enemy
tried to work round on either flank, but was again foiled
with much hurt to himself. This fighting was, however,
mainly to distract attention from more serious actions
further north, which have developed, and are still in prog-
ress. Meanwhile, further south, on both sides of the
Somme, the enemy is, as Ihave said, trying to press nearer
to Amiens in the direction of Bray, and his outposts are at
Morlancourt and Dernancourt.

236 THE WAY TO VICTORY

There is one feature of his method of attack which is
remarkable, and which shows the quality of his artillery
officers. If he once gains a footing in any village or place
of advantage for his guns, they rush forward with their
light artillery and take up positions there regardless of
being blown to pieces by our counter -battery work. So
they did yesterday in Morlancourt, which we have kept
under intense destructive fire.

I find it impossible to gain any definite figures about the
enemy losses, because from prisoners' statements they vary
very much, and all estimates are between 30 per cent, and
50 per cent. It seems to me certain, however, that in the
first days of fighting the enemy paid a frightful price for
his attacks. It was only after that first phase, when our
foremost lines were utterly spent and tired by ceaseless
rear-guard actions, that the enemy was able to advance
more easily, picking up prisoners who were hardly able to
walk, rounding up groups of men who had fallen with an
irresistible craving for sleep, and cutting off small bodies
who found themselves surrounded before they could think
of escape. Even then there were always field-batteries
firing at his advancing columns at short range, mowing his
ranks as they came over the slopes of the Somme battle-
fields, and covering parties of riflemen who swept the head
of his column until their comrades had retired. And now,
in the second phase of the battle, he is again losing large
numbers of men, and in any close fighting he is roughly
handled.

I have said much already about the magnificent courage
of so many of our infantry and their endurance through
these tragic days and nights, so resolute and so strong that
they have kept in check the whole weight almost of the
German army on the Western Front, apart from the di-
visions holding the quiet sectors of the line. No praise is
too high for these English, Scottish, and Irish battalions
of the 2 1st, 51st, 17th, 36th, 47th, 63rd, 18th, 14th, and
other glorious divisions of ours, who, without rest or sleep,

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 237

for several days and nights, kept back this human ava-
lanche.

But our gunners, also, are beyond all words of praise
and gratitude, because of their unfailing endeavours.
Many of their guns were overwhelmed a week ago in the
wild storm of fire flung over our lines, but those who es-
caped from this monstrous bombardment have kept their
batteries in action ever since. Officers and men of the
gun teams have not spared themselves to protect the in-
fantry and destroy the enemy. I have seen some of them
in action during this fighting, and have marvelled at their
coolness. At times their officers are hoarse with shouting
the word "Fire!" and dazed for lack of sleep, but clear-
headed enough to see an S O S signal and get a straight
target. They saved nearly all our heavy guns, and have
trudged back over battlefields over terrible broken ground
between Bapaume and Albert and between places like
Gouzeaucourt and Ham, urging on their slow-going cater-
pillars and encouraging the men. Our heavies are ready
for more work again if ever there is a chance of fixed po-
sitions, and meanwhile our lighter guns are keeping up a
chorus of fire along the whole sweep of the enemy's line.
It is the fire maintained by these gunners of ours and by
the wagon drivers who have brought up ammunition, so
that there is always a heap of shells round every battery
that has inflicted such fearful losses on the German troops,
apart from the never-silent blast of machine-gun fire and
rifle-fire of our infantry outposts.

The enemy has also suffered from attacks by our air-
men, so sensational and destructive that the main roads have
been cleared of his troops and they have been forced to take
to the open country. I know many cases of airmen of
ours who, during this battle, have gone out over the Ba-
paume-Albert road and other highways behind the Ger-
man lines flying no higher than 500 feet and dropping
bombs into masses of moving troops, and after scattering
large columns chasing them with deadly machine-gun fire

238

THE WAY TO VICTORY

and inflicting many casualties. This morning- our airmen
were flying like that over roads along the Somme from
Bray, and it was they who brought back news of the new
concentration for the attack which began to-day, after

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THE GERMANS OUTSIDE AMIENS, MARCH 1918

flinging their challenge of death into these assemblies.
I must add to what I said yesterday about the divisions
which have been in this fighting, though nothing that I
could say would picture the splendour of these men, among
whom I have been to-day. They are dog-tired and dirty;

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 239

and this morning a cruel east wind was cutting them after
a night of intense cold in the line. They were unshaven,
they had tied shawls round their heads under their steel
hats, they were powdered with dust and chalk, but they
held their heads high, and their limbs straightened up as
their bands marched at the head of the columns. And in
other fields and roads were bodies of men waiting to go
into action or just out of battle, sleeping in every attitude
of restfulness, with their heads on each other's shoulders,
or hunched together for warmth, or with their faces cov-
ered by blankets and their hairy coats tucked up to their
ears.

Endless columns of transport move along the roads be-
tween the guns and gun-wagons, and the drivers nod over
their horses or their lorries, or sit awake on bundles of
supplies with one arm round some dear, ridiculous little
dog which belongs to almost every service wagon, and is
the innocent comrade representing to these lads of ours the
human side of life and its affections.

There is another crowd on the roads, pitiful but heroic.
It is the crowd of refugees who are abandoning many vil-
lages now in the zone of war and many small towns on the
edge of it, and fleeing from the approach of the enemy
whom they fear more than cold and hunger, more than
poverty and misery, more than the loss of everything that
was theirs in the world. I saw the first tide of these poor
people when the Germans came near to Ham and Peronne
and Roye. Some of them had been once in the hands of
the Germans, and at this second menace they left their
homes and their fields and their shops and came trekking
westwards and southwards. One's heart bleeds to see
these refugees, and it is the most tragic aspect of these
days. There were many old people among them, old
women in black gowns and caps, who came hobbling very
slowly down the highways of war, and old men with bent
backs, who lean heavily on their gnarled sticks as the guns
go by and the fighting men. I saw one old man near Ham

240 THE WAY TO VICTORY

who was trundling along a wheelbarrow, and on this was
spread a mattress, and on that was an old lady, his wife.
She looked ninety years of age, with a white, wrinkled face,
and she was fast asleep like a little child.

Many children are on the roads, packed tight into farm-
carts, with household furniture and bundles of clothing
and poultry and pigs and new-born lambs. The noise of
gun-fire is behind them, and they move faster when it grows
louder. They are very brave, these boys and girls and
these old people. There is hardly any weeping or any
look on their face of grudge against this unkind turn of
fate. They seem to accept it with stoical resignation, with
the most matter-of-fact courage, and their only answer to
pity is a smile and the words: "Cest la guerre." Those
are words I first heard in the early weeks of the war and
hoped never to hear again.

Many of these people trek in family groups and gather-
ings of families from one village. Small boys and girls
drag tired cows after them. The other day one of these
cows leaned against every tree she passed and then sat
down, and the girl with her looked round helplessly, not
knowing now what to do. This morning I saw a girl wear-
ing a veil and dressed in an elegant way taking a cow with
her. She was quite alone on the road. It is queer and touch-
ing that most of these fugitives wear their best clothes, as
though on a fete day. It is because they are clothes they
want to save, and can only save by wearing them in their
flight.

In one town the fear of the German entry came at night
— a bright moonlight night into which there came many
German bombing squadrons. The citizens had shut up
their shops and stood about talking anxiously. Then fear
and rumour spread among them, and all through the night
there was an exodus of small families and solitary girls
and comrades in misfortune stealing away like shadows
from the homes they loved, from little fortunes or their
shops, from all their normal life, into the open country,

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE Ml

where the moonlight lay white and cold on the fields. Be-
hind them bombs were being dropped, and some of their
houses were destroyed.
C'est la guerre.

March 29
As I indicated yesterday, the enemy's pressure has for the
time being relaxed a little across the Somme east of Corbie,
and whatever effort he has made there during the past day
and night has been repulsed with most heavy losses. I
will tell later of that fighting, but yesterday the most ex-
citing situation and fiercest struggle was on the left of our
battle-line from Gavrelle southwards to below the Scarpe.
It was a deliberate, resolute effort by the enemy to capture
Arras. Three divisions of special storm troops — the 184th,
1 2th, and 26th Reserve — had been brought up for this pur-
pose, though one of them had been engaged before and
roughly handled, and the attack on Arras seems to have
been postponed. They were ordered to take Arras yes-
terday at all costs, and before their advance a very heavy
bombardment was flung over our lines from about five
o'clock in the morning for several hours.

Men who were on our right in this fighting tell me that
this gun-fire was not quite so heavy as on the morning of
the 2 1st, but still of great intensity. It spread far behind
our lines to back areas behind Arras in order to hinder
the traffic on the roads and to keep back supporting troops.

Masses of men were seen by our airmen advancing down
the Arras-Cambrai road and round by Monchy Hill.
Their main thrust was towards Roeux, that frightful lit-
tle village with its chemical works which I used to write
about so much in April and May last, when Scottish bat-
talions of the 15th Division and other men of ours fought
in and out until all these ruins were littered with dead.

Once again yesterday it became shambles. We had ma-
chine-guns well placed with a wide field of fire, and as the
Germans came down the slopes they were swept with

242 THE WAY TO VICTORY

streams of bullets, which cut swathes in their formations.
But once again, as on March 21, the enemy was reckless of
life, theirs as well as ours, and always his tide of men
ebbed forward, passing over dead and wounded and creep-
ing forward like flowing water. Our field-guns raked
them while our heavies pulled further back to avoid being
blown up or captured. On and about Orange Hill and
Telegraph Hill battalions of the 15th Division, who know
this ground of old, fought tenaciously under murderous
machine-gun fire, the enemy's screen of infantry covering
machine-gun batteries, which were rushed forward very
quickly, and took up positions in shell-holes and behind
bits of broken wall and any kind of cover in ditches and
sunken roads.

Their rifle-fire was weak (say our men, who believe
themselves to be much stronger as riflemen), but the Ger-
man machine-gunner is efficient, and their machine-guns
are very numerous. At some points our men suffered se-
verely from their fire, and in spite of most stubborn fight-
ing, they were forced to give a little ground here and there.
The line was firmly held in the village of Bailleul, a mere
huddle of bricks as I saw it last below a line of tattered
trees which lead to Oppy down to Fampoux on the Scarpe.
There our line was somewhat bent back in the neighbour-
hood of Feuchy and Tilloy and Neuville-Vitasse, places
which were taken by Scots and Londoners of the 15th and
56th Divisions in the Battle of Arras a year ago after
fighting which will live for ever in history.

The footing gained by the enemy on a part of Orange
Hill and Infantry Hill rendered it necessary to fall back
yesterday towards the old German support lines before that
battle in April of 19 17. Our troops fought like tigers and
would not retire until the pressure on them made it impos-
sible to resist the continual thrust of new attacks by fresh
troops. There were heroic actions by small groups of men
struggling to hold up the front line, and some of them
stayed so long after the enemy had broken beyond them

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 243

that they were cut off. Frightful fighting was happening
not far from Neuville-Vitasse and Mercatel, and in this
neighbourhood our men held out with wonderful deter-
mination until exhausted by battle and until only a poor
remnant of men had strength to stand against these massed
attacks. By the end of the day the enemy's assaults weak-
ened, and then died out, because his losses were enormous
and the spirit of his attack was broken by such stubborn
resistance.

So far to-day the battle has not been resumed except by
gun-fire, and the enemy is either disheartened at the price
of the advance or is waiting for the arrival of fresh troops
to resume his battering towards the gates of Arras, which
were stormed in long ago by Attila and his Huns, and now
again have them very near us. With all my heart I hope
the enemy will not gain an entry into that old city, so rav-
aged by his shell-fire, but still beautiful with all its wounds.
All French history has its ghosts there, from the time when
Julius Caesar made his home in it for a year until the Counts
of Flanders and Artois and the Dukes of Burgundy filled
it with pageantry and fine buildings and the songs of trou-
badours, and in the time of the great Revolution, the guillo-
tine was set up in Theatre-Square and many heads fell be-
neath the knife. Our history, too, is bound up with Arras
from early days, but to me and to all our soldiers its mem-
ory will be for ever haunted with those scenes a year ago,
when our battalions had advanced to the edge of battle-
fields from which they drove back a great German army
many miles. To-day the enemy is struggling towards his
old line, and, in these wrecked trenches and amidst the
litter of his old wire and wreckage and graves, there is
bloody fighting once more.

South of Arras, along the line running down near the
ruined villages of Ficheux, which is nothing but a name,
and Ayette, which has some rubbish-heaps of brick, and
Ablainzeville and Bucquoy, from which the German army
retreated when it withdrew beyond Bapaume. There was

244 THE WAY TO VICTORY

a series of attacks yesterday of minor character, though
fierce affairs costing many lives. The Germans made a
great effort to capture Ayette, and pierced to the south of
the village, but were flung out by a sharp counter-attack.

Similar fights were in progress at Ablainzeville and
Puisieux and Rossignol Wood, near Gommecourt, where I
remember going out to our outposts when Gommecourt was
delivered from the enemy in the days of good remembrance.
To those of us who know these places it gives a sharp edge
of regret to our knowledge that they are again under the
evil spell of bloody strife.

The result of yesterday's fighting was proof that we are
continuing to make the enemy pay a dreadful price for any
advance, and that, though with his vast superiority in num-
bers, he may be able to thrust forward his line in places,
he is never able to break our line entirely and in an over-
whelming way. For our troops fall back when necessary
in an orderly way, keeping in touch on their right and left
under cover of dauntless rear-guards, and forming a new
line, against which the enemy must struggle the next time,
always with the vain hope of dividing our forces and round-
ing up large numbers of men.

Prisoners vary very much in their evidence about losses,
some of them putting them as high as 50 per cent., others
dropping as low as 30 per cent., but the evidence of our
own troops and of our aviators, who fly over fields of dead,
seems to prove beyond all doubt that the enemy has suf-
fered appallingly. He is losing men in great numbers, not
only in big battles like that round Arras yesterday, but in
smaller engagements like those in the neighbourhood of
Albert and up the valley of the Ancre, through Aveluy
Wood past Ovillers and Thiepval.

Men who have been fighting here round Albert tell me
that our batteries caught the German waves of men as
they advanced down the slopes from La Boiselle and Mon-
tauban and shattered them as they came, but could not al-
together stop those masses moving forward into their fire.

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 245

Men who were holding our lines round Albert on Tuesday
night fell back to the outskirts of the town, that red-brick
town of the falling Virgin, when the enemy streamed into
the other end about five o'clock in the afternoon. Since
then there has been much fighting at close quarters, ex-
tending northwards into Aveluy Wood. Some of our
troops there have never had less than two attacks against
them each day, and yesterday the Germans tried to rush
Aveluy Wood and get to Martinsart; but they were flung
back, leaving many killed and wounded among the trees.
They managed to get a machine-gun along the railway to
enfilade our men, but our own machine-guns have swept
them night and day. Our field-guns also caught him here,
and some of his troops could be seen running back in re-
treat to Ovillers. Five of our machine-guns, with gallant
teams, went out 600 yards ahead of the infantry, and held
the position here — quite isolated, but doing deadly work
all through day and night.

There were at one period of the battle four German di-
visions here against one of ours. The German artillery is
being brought up all along this part of the line down to
Morlancourt and Cerisy, the country south of the Somme,
and gun-fire is now more severe than after the first day of
the great offensive. But the Somme battlefields make slow
going for the heavy guns, and their state is not improved
by the violent rains which fell last night, so that the ene-
my's gunners and transport drivers are struggling in the
sticky ground over the shell-craters of a year's battles.
South of the Somme our line has drawn back slightly near
Proyart, in order to straighten out.

Many of our men are beyond all words magnificent —
so steady in adversity, so long-enduring, so unmoved by
any bad luck, so defiant of fatigue and the weakness of the
flesh. Even when individual men can hardly walk their
spirit is strong and keen. Though many battalions have
suffered heavy losses in this long and fierce fighting, the
survivors take their place in the firing-line and are ready

246 THE WAY TO VICTORY

to meet the enemy again and punish him again and make
him pay his toll fees of blood. Many of them have fought
with martyrs' courage and have offered their lives up for
their country in a spirit of heroic sacrifice. So was it with
a body of men fighting yesterday near Neuville-Vitasse.
They fought until only thirty men were left standing and
not any officer. Somebody then took command and or-
ganized a new defence, and those thirty fought on until
most of them had fallen and their leader was taken pris-
oner.

To-day I have been among our wounded, and although
one's heart bled at the sight of so many fine lads all bloody
and bandaged, the calm way in which they spoke of their
ordeal, the quiet acceptance of their pain, the valour of
their souls, stirred one with a sense of something divine in
this humanity of ours, these simple boys of the English
counties and of the Scottish hills and glens. There was
never a man among them, though some were wounded mor-
tally, who uttered a word of despair or anguish. In dark
days as in bright days they take the fortune of war with
fine soldierly courage. And men who have come out of the
battle after days of incessant fighting, so weak that .they
can hardly stand, so dirty that they are almost unrecog-
nizable, are restored as though by some magical drug after
a night's sleep and wash and shave and change of kit. I
passed many of them to-day, the heroes of these battles,
and upon my faith they did not look as though they had
suffered outrageous things and fought through an epic

of war.

Our zone of war is a great moving drama of human
traffic, like a nation of soldiers gathering for battles to de-
cide the fate of empires, and though rain slashed down to-
day, and horses and mules tramped through mud, and riders
in steel hats had for once unshaven faces, and all the fields
were filled with a litter of material of war, and everything
from guns to forage was mixed up along the highways and
drab under the weeping skies, it was a pageant of our race

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 347

which stirred one's soul with some emotion beyond words.
For in this crisis, when we are at grips with the full power
of the enemy, the faces of our boys who go passing by
show no sign of stress, and even in all the turmoil there
is order, and hardly a man loses his nerve or his temper.
The best qualities of our race and breed are seen now,
when they are most wanted, and that is the promise which
gives good hope that, whatever happens, we shall not fail.

March 31
We now have knowledge that the attack on Arras was
prepared on a scale of enormous strength by divisions in
depth, preceded by a bombardment as great as that which
fell upon any part of our line on the morning of March
21, and that the enemy had determined to capture, not only
Arras itself, but the Vimy Ridge. It was the heroic re-
sistance of our troops of the 56th (London) Division and
the 15th (Scottish) Division that defeated this furious on-
slaught and destroyed, by enormous losses to German
troops, this dark scheme of their High Command.

Seven German divisions were in position north of the
Scarpe, and twelve south in the arc round our defence of
Arras, and I believe their plan was for two divisions to
capture the city, supported by others following close, while
three divisions of storm troops were to rush through when
our battalions were heavily engaged or overwhelmed, and
seize the heights of Vimy. The brunt of this attack, pre-
ceded by colossal gun-fire, fell upon the London troops, and
against these boys of ours from the old City at home Ger-
man tides dashed and broke. By gun-fire, machine-gun fire,
and rifle-fire the enemy's advancing waves of men were
swept to pieces, and though they came on again and again
this massacre continued until at last it must have sickened
even the high German officers directing the operations from
behind, and the attacks died out, and the night was quiet
round Arras, while the enemy collected their wounded.
It was an utter defeat which will, at least, check German

248 THE WAY TO VICTORY

efforts round Arras, though they may be renewed with that
ruthlessness of life, to achieve a settled purpose, which is
one quality of German generalship.

Yesterday there was a number of violent engagements,
which were decided mainly in our favour, and sent more
victims to German field hospitals. During the night of
Friday enemy patrols apparently penetrated into the woods
above Moreuil, on the River Avre, and yesterday some
bodies of our cavalry moved forward to clear them out.
They did this with skill and success, and held their ground.
Somewhat later in the morning the Germans began an at-
tack in the region between Marcelcave and War fusee,
across the high road from Amiens to St.-Quentin, after
heavy gunning, which lasted about an hour. Our troops
raked them with machine-gun fire and dispersed them. For
a time they were quiet, but at 1.45, after two more hours of
bombardment, they attacked again in greater strength, and
again were beaten back with most bloody losses. In the
morning also there were violent attacks on one side of
Arras, and here once more the losses of the German as-
saulting division were so high that these regiments were
almost destroyed. It was a fresh division just brought up
to battle, but now, after a few hours, is broken up, and
large numbers of dead lie outside Arras among those who
fell two days ago. On this Easter Sunday, under bright
sunshine, which is breaking through storm clouds, the fields
of France are strewn with death. A year ago it was the
same round the old city of Artois, for it was on Easter
Sunday, April 9, that we began the Battle of Arras, and
fought over that ground which is again our battle-field,
and it was a great anthem of gun-fire which rose up to the
sky on Easter Morn.

It would be unwise to exaggerate the enemy's losses, and
I find it very difficult to get an exact idea of them, but it
seems to me certain that since that Thursday morning when
they launched their offensive ten days ago, they have
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THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 249

deeply anxious as to the moral of their men and the out-
come of this dreadful gamble with fate. In spite, too, of
their progress over the old Somme battlefields, those bar-
ren and blasted slopes, where there is nothing worth cap-
ture and only one vast graveyard and one wide stretch of
hideous lifelessness, they have failed so far in their ambi-
tions and their plans. Their intention was to break our
armies to bits by the enormous weight of their onslaught,
and by piercing between the gap to cut off masses of troops,
whole divisions and whole brigades, so that we should be
utterly undone. In that they failed. Apart from all re-
grets at having had to fall back at all, and at having suf-
fered losses for which there is mourning in our hearts be-
cause of so many splendid men of ours who have fallen on
the field of honour — that terrible field of honour which
will be watered with tears for all time — we may at least
rejoice that by the skill of our fighting officers and steady
courage of our men our line was brought back unbroken,
and that all the way back to our present position the enemy
was never able to strike through and roll up large forces.
It is true that he has taken many prisoners, but they were
the remnants of rear-guards and isolated bodies, and broken
companies, not complete units or anything like a group of
divisions divided from the rest of our Army.

Nothing in all this battle is finer than the way in which
the 17th Division fought its way back to our present line
of defence, while the march of the 63rd (Naval) Division
in face of the enemy trying to pierce through on our flank
was a thrilling episode. The 17th Division was made up
of the 50th Brigade, composed of West Yorks, East Yorks,
and Dorsets; the 51st Brigade of Borders, Sherwoods, and
Lincolns; and the 52nd Brigade of Lancashire Fusiliers,
West Ridings, the Manchesters, and Yorkshire and Lanca-
shire Pioneers.

I have been among these men, and from the generals
and officers heard the full narrative of those anxious hours.
One battalion was holding the line in front of Hermies and

250 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Havrincourt on the morning of the 21st, and, although
under that frightful bombardment after dawn, only lost
150 yards of their trenches in the enemy's onrush with what
might have seemed overpowering forces, but they did not
overpower our men, who fought like Greek heroes. They
counter-attacked the enemy and drove him out of the
ground he had gained.

Hermies was attacked six times and Havrincourt seven
times, but the enemy fell in heaps and could not break
through. There was a sunken road at Demicourt from
which the enemy deployed, and it became a ditch of death
for the German storm troops. They were mown down by
machine-guns and shrapnel again and again until that
sunken road was heaped with their bodies laid out in rows.
But enemy success elsewhere made it necessary for the
17th Division to withdraw towards Haplincourt and Bertin-
court, and so to Villers-au-Flos. This was on the night
of the 22nd, and by this time the enemy had taken Beau-
metz and Velu Wood, seriously threatening the Division's
flank. They were in danger of being surrounded. They
blew up the lock of the canal, and rear-guards covered their
withdrawal. They were isolated, and had the enemy be-
tween them and their friends, and had to hack their way
through.

The guns were west of Bertincourt, and the enemy tried
to rush them with machine-gun detachments, firing at short
range, but after shattering the enemy waves they limbered
up and got away to new positions. The 17th Division then
concentrated at Barastre and dug in, and as its commander
told me, the men were "quite happy" and not worrying.
But the situation all round was serious. Other British
troops on both flanks — the 51st and 47th Divisions — fight-
ing against great odds, were hard pressed, and the enemy
was trying to pierce their lines. The 63rd (Naval) unit,
which had lost heavily in earlier bombardments before the
battle, but had fought like tigers, had been ordered to pass
through the 17th Division and take up a position near

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 251

Ytres. But the enemy forced a gap at Bus and Ytres, and
pressed his men forward in the hope of striking through
that gap and rolling up both these units.

On March 24 the position was grave, but it was then that
our troops were most splendid and their generalship most
skilful. The general commanding the Naval Division was
always with his men in the firing-line and controlling every
disposition, and in the morning he ordered the whole unit
to form into columns and march in front of Bus, where
the enemy was in strength, to Eaucourt L'Abbaye and High
Wood. They marched in parade order, with perfect dis-
cipline, throwing out flanking guard with machine-guns,
and so those men, weakened by many losses, but strong in
spirit, went across the Somme battlefields, masses of the
enemy on their flank, and it was a great sight under the sky,
and one which should be pictured in history. On the way
they found food in some of our stores and burnt huts at
Le Transloy, the general setting light to them himself, and
the men, who had been thirty-six days in the line, held
themselves straight and whistled to the tramp of their feet.

Meanwhile the 17th Division was holding off the enemy,
seriously menaced by that break through at Ytres. The
enemy was advancing from Combles through Morval and
Lesbceufs to Le Transloy, which was on the Division's
road, at the same time piercing westwards from Ytres it-
self.

It was a race for Le Transloy. If the enemy got there
first, all was lost.

The general manoeuvred his men with fine skill as on a
chessboard, withdrawing one portion and then another,
turn and turn about, so that always the enemy was headed
off, and these wolves could never reach the Naval Division,
or break through the guard of the 17th.

Some pioneers of the Yorks and Lanes and the Royal En-
gineers were ordered to high ground to cover transport
moving away, and they put up a great fight. The enemy

252 THE WAY TO VICTORY

was shelling all the roads round Bapaume and Tilloy, and
the transport had to gallop through this fire.

The 50th Brigade with the West Yorks, East Yorks, and
Dorsets, was detached from the rest in order to strengthen
the position by Guedecourt, where a third brigade was hard
pressed and engaged in intense fighting, and did not reap-
pear until the withdrawal was complete to our present line.

There was more hard fighting at Mametz Wood and
Fricourt. So on March 26 the remainder of the 17th Di-
vision reached its journey's end, having fought a con-
tinual rear-guard action in which they punished the enemy
again and again, and kept their line intact. It is as fine
a feat as anything that has been done in this war. There
was no rest for a time, and both the 51st and 52nd Brigades
of the 17th Division, with the survivors of the Naval Di-
vision, were called to fight on the west bank of the Ancre
above Albert, where other troops of the 12th Division,
badly fatigued, were being heavily attacked.

Without murmur, these men who had fought down from
Hermies and Havrincourt went to their aid. There was
an hour in the night when the enemy looked like breaking
through towards Martinsart, and the commander of the
Naval Division, who was sleeping deeply, after many nights
of sleeplessness, was awakened and told that the enemy was
near. Machine-gun bullets were pattering on the roof of
the hut while the general put on his boots, but a sharp
counter-attack drove the enemy back in time.

Scots of the 51st Division also reached our final posi-
tions, not without losses, after fierce engagements, in which
the Highland battalions fought in their old way, which put
them first on the list of those whom the enemy most fears.

March 30
After heavy fighting around Arras, and minor engage-
ments north and south of the Somme, the battle-front has
quietened down at the time of writing, and there is one of

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 253

those lulls in which the enemy is reorganizing and devel-
oping new plans.

During the last day or two it is becoming evident that
the German troops are beginning to lose some of the spirit
which they had in the first advance, and are becoming de-
pressed and anxious as to the future of their wild gamble
for decisive victory. One day last week the enemy tried to
rush Hebuterne, and gained a position in the cemetery, a
most sinister place of opened graves and broken tombs,
where he put seven machine-guns in position. Our troops
determined to fling him out, and advanced upon the ceme-
tery, but were checked at first by the tattoo of bullets from
those deadly machines. They came back and reorganized,
then swept through the village and charged the enemy's
line, smashing it to pieces.

I am now allowed to say something about another branch
of the Service which has had bad luck in this war, though
always ready for action and eager to play the part which
was theirs in the old days, prior to high explosives and ma-
chine-guns.

I mean the cavalry. Many cavalrymen have been hold-
ing sectors of the line as dismounted troops, and have been
splendid in courage and endurance. But as mounted men
also they have had a chance now and then, and have done
a good deal of scouting in the old-fashioned way, especially
on the right of our line, when the enemy was pushing out
round Ham and Noyon.

It was here I saw them a few days ago, when the enemy
was reported to be moving down from Ham to Guiscard,
where I happened to be. Nearby a French regiment was
bivouacked, after a long march to get to our relief, and all
the villages and fields round about were flooded with the
blue of French poilas who stood about trying to gather
from English Tommies what was happening la has. Sud-
denly there was a clatter of horses' hoofs, and a body of
mounted men streamed through Guiscard. The sun
gleamed upon their lances and steel hats, and they were

S54 THE WAY TO VICTORY

good to see. "Oh, for a horse to ride with them I" said a
friend of mine; and something stirred in one's heart at the
sight of those men going out on the great adventure. They
took a ditch at the jump, and rode hard over open coun-
try towards the enemy. One strange little squadron of
horse rode out in this way, and I think they were some I
saw that day. They were signallers, batmen, and strag-
glers mounted and made into cavalry for a while. But with
them went a queer detachment of infantry from a variety
of different regiments, all under an ex-town major, and
eight Lewis guns, with a battery of R.H.A. They were
"some crowd," as their commanding officer said. They
did most gallant work, and in the course of their adven-
tures charged the enemy and took 150 prisoners.

Throughout these battles the Royal Horse Artillery has
been magnificent, moving about in the open in front of the
enemy, getting into action, firing into the German columns
advancing on them, riding back, taking up new positions,
and repeating their performance at short range upon massed
bodies of troops shattered by this fire. Three batteries dis-
appeared for three days, and seemed to have been lost in
the blue. They reappeared in quite a different part of the
line, having fought all the time in these rear-guard actions.
It was touch and go several times. Sometimes there were
gaps between our units, through which the enemy tried to
break. But often the gaps were filled up at the psycho-
logical moment by heroic efforts. By constant rear-guard
actions of stout fighting our withdrawal was covered.

IV

The Valour of the Men

April i
The battle of which I have been trying to give a daily nar-
rative has been on so vast a scale, filled with so many epi-
sodes of terrific adventure, and with so many hundreds of

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 255

thousands of men moving along its lines of fire, that I
find it impossible to give the picture and emotion and spirit
of it. We out here who knew that this thing was coming
upon us, creeping nearer every day with its monstrous men-
ace, held our breath and waited. When at last the thing
broke it was more frightful in its loosing of overwhelm-
ing powers than even we had guessed. Since then all our
armies have lived with intense understanding of the great-
ness of these days, of their meaning to the destiny of the
world, and every private soldier or transport driver or
linesman or labourer has been exalted by an emotion
stronger than the effect of drugs. They do not say much,
these men of ours, but there is a queer light in their eyes,
shining out of faces greyed by sleeplessness, or streaked
with blood. They laugh in the same old way at any joke
on the road, and sometimes when shells are bursting close,
as I heard gusts of laughter following crashes of high
velocities about some groups of men a day or two ago.

They go marching up to the battle-line with unfaltering
feet, their bands leading them on to the edge of its fire zone,
and it is like a pageant as they pass, these long columns
of men in steel hats, shouldering heavy packs, with their
rifles slung and these miles long of transport, and these end-
less teams of mule drivers and wagon drivers, and streams
of mounted men. As an onlooker I have been caught up
in these tides for hundreds of kilometres from south to
north, and the spirit of these armies on the move seems
almost visible, as though all emotion in these men's hearts
were vibrant about one. Men who have just moved up to
hold the lines are hoping for an attack, so that they can
smash more enemy divisions. Anger moves in them be-
cause the enemy threw us back in places by overwhelming
odds. Now they swear he will be stopped and broken.
Their own losses do not make them mournful. They wipe
out of their minds for the time the horrors and tragedy
they have seen. Fierce exultation at the destruction of the
enemy, grim pride in repulsing his bloodiest attacks, reso-

256 THE WAY TO VICTORY

lution to pay back and take back have changed the gentlest
fellow into a man who handles his rifle or machine-gun with
a secret promise to himself, ready to stop with his own
body another German advance. Passion has taken pos-
session of our men, because they know that if the enemy
broke through them, all they have fought for would be
jeopardized, and this four years of war would have been
in vain for us. That seems to me the only explanation of
things that have been done by masses of our men, or by
small bodies isolated in rear-guard actions — astounding
things in endurance and sacrifice.

Yesterday I saw some of those men of the 56th, 4th, and
15th Divisions, who have been fighting in the Battle of
Arras, heroes of the heaviest blow the enemy has received
since March 21. There were the London regiments of the
56th Division amongst them, and their band was playing
tattoos as evening set in amid the great glory of the gold-
flamed western sky after a day of storm. The colonel of
their battalion — it was the London Rifle Brigade — came out
after a sleep and wrash and shave. All his kit had been
lost in a dug-out, but he had borrowed a razor from his
batman, and nobody would have guessed that this smiling
man, with perfectly bright eyes and easy manners, had
just come out of battle, where many of his men fell around
him under frightful shelling, where he had been firing a
rifle all day long at crowds of Germans, and where he had
seen dead bodies piled on dead bodies as the enemy came
up in waves against the blasts of machine-gun bullets and
the fire of our field artillery. He spoke just a word or two
about the tragedy of losing many of his best and bravest,
then put that thought aside and told of their heroic defence
and slaughter of the enemy.

It was great slaughter in that Battle of Arras. From
documents found on a German airman brought down in
our lines it is now certain that the enemy had most ambi-
tious objectives, including the capture of Arras and turning
of Vimy Ridge. Two German divisions were holding the

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 257

line north of the Scarpe, from Gavrelle to Oppy, and three
special shock divisions were assembled to pass through and
turn the ridge from the south, while further south one di-
vision was to take the heights east of Arras, and a Guards
division to take Arras itself.

After that, their objectives were indefinite. This bat-
talion of the London Rifle Brigade were holding the fore-
most line by a system of posts in advance of the battle-
line, among them Mill Post, Bradford Post, and Towie
Post. The enemy began the battle by concentrating the
bombardment on these while he gassed support-lines and
field-artillery positions, and brought his barrage backwards
and forwards over our main defences down there by Gav-
relle and Bailleul and Oppy Wood, where one evening be-
fore March 21 I went to see some of these London lads,
and saw those sinister ruins and broken trees which three
days ago were smothered in the fury of fire. Most of the
posts were blotted out. From one hard by the Westmin-
sters, a small body of men surrounded by numbers of the
enemy, fought their way back. An officer of the London
Rifle Brigade, who has been out since the beginning of the
war, says he never saw such an intense bombardment, and
when it lifted the Germans came over in close formation,
wave after wave. Behind them, at some distance, rode
the company commanders on horses, and behind them field
artillery. Each man carried a full pack and an extra pair
of boots as for a long march, and rations for six days.
They did not travel far ; they were caught by machine-gun
fire and literally mown down on the wire.

Our field-guns made targets of them and tore gaps in
their waves. Some of them got into our front line, but the
London Riflemen pulled down parts of their parapet, made
blocks in their trench and kept them back by bombing and
rifle-fire. An enemy battery was unlimbered, and Ger-
man officers strolled up with sticks to point out gaps in
our wire to their men and were shot down like rabbits.
These London men fell back to the main defensive line a

#58 THE WAY TO VICTORY

short distance to the rear, and the enemy never penetrated
this, though all day long he made fresh efforts from 9.45 in
the morning till 7 in the evening. The London men lost
many of their comrades in all those hours of bloody, costly
fighting, but by heroic defence they foiled the enemy's
most ambitious plan. Our machine-gunners say that they
were sick of killing, and the colonel of the Rifle Bridage
used 300 rounds, and each bullet found its mark.

London troops on the right of these bore the brunt of
most formidable attacks on the same method as those above.
Men of the 2nd Essex fought like demons, say their offi-
cers, in our foremost trenches, and one body of them sent
back a message that they were going to fight to the death.
They did, and not a man came back.

Some Scottish battalions of the 15th Division were hard
pressed, and had to withdraw till nightfall to the second
line through Fampoux. Since then, counter-attacks have
restored a good deal of the ground.

All day long our aeroplanes reported concentrations of
troops pouring down the Arras-Cambrai road and other
routes of march, and the artillery had so many targets that
they could hardly switch on to them fast enough. Enemy
losses were fantastic in their horror. Meanwhile, on the
right again, below the Cambrai road, our men were putting
up that heroic stand which I have partly described in other
messages. There the 3rd Division — that wonderful di-
vision which has fought with dogged courage all through
the war — were holding the line from the Cambrai road to
Fontaine Wood. They were not attacked on the 21st, but
on the following day a big assault broke upon them and was
repulsed after fierce fighting. The enemy worked round
south past the 34th Division, but our Guards came up in
support and killed many of them. On the night of the
22nd the 3rd Division moved to a line between Wancourt
and Henin, and until the 28th broke attack after attack in
spite of their own increasing losses which drained their
strength until they were but a thin heroic line. They had

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 259

three German divisions and part of a fourth against them,
and when at last they were relieved the survivors of this
very gallant division of ours came out singing. Every bat-
talion of the 3rd Division fought until they were but a rem-
nant. The Suffolks on the Wancourt-Tilloy road fought
the enemy both ways, back to back, with Germans on each
side of them. Parties of Northumberland Fusiliers fought
until all were killed or wounded. There was a battle of
eight hours round battalion headquarters. Company com-
manders fought with rifles until they fell. Scottish Fusi-
liers at Henin gave ground slowly under enormous odds,
and killed the enemy all the way back. One of our ma-
chine-gun batteries counted 400 German dead opposite their
position. Round Neuville-Vitasse and Henin Hill the en-
emy bodies lie in heaps.

All through this battle in shelled areas behind, our traf-
fic men were controlling roads, timing the arrival of shells
and passing traffic through between those times. No
troops have ever fought more bravely than these, and their
names will be remembered with honour throughout our his-
tory when all this will seem like a mad, bad dream of a
world in conflict.

Away from Arras, and down on the south of the line, a
certain body of Canadians have been having some of the
most astounding adventures in all this battle, and, fighting
with valour and heroic audacity, leave one breathless.
They are officers and men of a machine-gun detachment
organized in the early days of war by a French-Canadian
officer at the expense of himself and ten friends, and with
waiting enthusiasm which looked forward to the day when
they would be wanted for great service. That day came on
March 21, and when I saw this French-Canadian officer
yesterday, a tall, dark, quiet man, speaking with hidden
emotion, he knew that his idea was justified, and that his
officers and men had made good to the uttermost limits of
gallant service. For ten days these cars have fought run-

260 THE WAY TO VICTORY

ning fights with German patrols. They have engaged Ger-
man cavalry and smashed them, checked enemy columns
crossing bridges and pouring downwards, scattered large
bodies of men surrounding ours, and in ten days of crowded
life have destroyed many German storm troops and helped
to hold up the tide of their advance. Their own losses
have not been light, for these Canadians have been filled
with grim passion, determined to die rather than yield to
any odds, and when that happened they fought and died.

After the first call on March 21, and orders to move on
the morning of the 22nd, eight cars were in action the same
day, 100 kilometres away, after a night without sleep, and
other detachments followed them quickly. Sometimes they
fought mounted in these long, grey, open cars, which I
saw early in the battle, wondering at them, and sometimes
they fought dismounted, with their machine-guns on the
ground. But always they fought through ten days and
nights, with less than twenty hours' sleep all that time.
These cars near Maricourt gathered together 150 men who
had been cut off, and held the enemy at bay, covering the
withdrawal of some of our heavy guns and Tanks. That
time they fought dismounted, with their Vickers guns in
front of barbed wire to get observation. The enemy's
frontal attack was stopped, but he worked round the flanks,
and a captain of an armoured-car battery ordered his men
behind the wire. The enemy had to come through a nar-
row gap and was killed as he came. The Canadians had
many casualties, and a captain's arm was torn away by an
explosive bullet, and at last only a sergeant and two pri-
vates were left unwounded. One of them mounted a mo-
tor-cycle and brought back the cars and took back the
wounded. Two cars found the enemy massing up the
road, and their machine-guns enfiladed these field-grey men
and killed them in large numbers.

Near La Motte they fought heavy bodies of German
cavalry, killed a number, and put the rest to flight. They

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 261

have not been seen since. At Cerisy a battalion of Ger-
mans, 600 strong, was encountered at cross-roads by one
car, which brought them to a standstill and dispersed them
with heavy losses. There was a fierce action also round
Villers-Carbonnel, where these armoured cars stopped a
gap of 2500 yards under a Canadian officer, who was twice
surrounded in villages crowded with Germans, and fought
his way out. At the second time all the crew were killed
except the driver, but the officer dismounted, took his gun,
posted himself at the street corner, and fired on the at-
tacking Germans until they were quite close, when he
jumped into the car and drove away. One battery in ac-
tion, dismounted, ran out of ammunition, but fought with
bombs until these were spent, and then charged the enemy
with their fists and empty revolvers and machine-gun bar-
rels.

Everybody is ready to help these cars, and their crews
carry their loads, for they know what terrible casualties
they have caused the Huns. At times the enemy — like
sheep without a shepherd — walk blindly into their guns only
to be mown down. Everywhere they have been these
Canadian armoured cars have helped to steady the line and
give confidence to the infantry. They are the darlings of
the troops, these grim fighting fellows, with jests on their
lips and utterly reckless of life, so long as they kill Ger-
mans. One of their officers is called by the nickname of
"Canada," and a shout of regret went up when it was
learnt that he had been blown off his motor-bicycle by a
shell-burst, and is now a casualty, though not seriously
wounded. These cars have been in scores of fights, and
one day their history must be fully written by one of their
comrades. It is like a romance of boyhood written by
Mayne Reid or James Grant, and one forgets the tragedy
of all this blood and death which follows the wake of those
cars because of the valour and hardihood and adventurous
spirit of their officers and crews.

262 THE WAY TO VICTORY

April 2
Our respite from massed attacks since the last Battle of
Arras does not mean that the enemy has abandoned his
ambitious plans to drive a wedge between the British and
French armies, by making a breach in the lines between
Amiens and Montdidier and straightening the line of his ad-
vance to avoid a dangerous salient by overwhelming our
left flank north of Arras. It is probable that he is paus-
ing only to drag his guns across the wild waste of the
Somme battlefield, where there is slow progress, to bring
new reserves of men into the battle-line, and to prepare
another blow, as equal in fury to the first effort as his
means now allow after the bloody losses and heavy en-
gagements with the French armies on his left wing.

I doubt whether his next effort will reach anything like
the strength of that battering-ram which shocked our lines
on March 21. For twelve days since then his wastage of
manpower has been incalculable, and every mile of his way
is strewn with his dead, here and there a few men, here
and there heaps of mortality. Backwards for those twelve
days there has flowed a tide of mangled men, filling his
hospitals and Red Cross trains. Forty at least of his as-
sault divisions have had to be withdrawn from our front
after casualties amounting in some cases, as we know, cer-
tainly to 40 and 50 per cent. Many of his companies and
battalions have been almost annihilated, only a score or so
of men going back to tell a frightful tale to their people.
Our heroic rear-guards foiled his first plans and smashed
his time-table and broke the spear-heads of his armies, so
that they had to turn aside in the direction not belonging
to the great strategical plan of the German High Com-
mand. Arras is not his. Amiens is not his. The Brit-
ish armies are still intact, in spite of all losses of men and
ground, and new French and British armies are at his
throat, ready to rend him to death if he is for a moment
at their mercy.

The enemy knows all this, but is playing for big stakes,

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 263

and their gamblers are ready to throw in all their human
counters in order to win or lose the last hazard. So they
will not stop now, because, if they stop, they have already
lost ; and they are waiting only to gather their forces for a
final throw. But this delay is our enormous gain. We,
too, have time to bring up our fresh men to replace those
who fought until they were spent, and who barred the way
of the German advance with their bodies and souls. The
enemy now in his next battle will meet men who are not
tired, and whose resolution is as great as those who met
the first onslaught. Australians and New Zealanders have
come into line, fresh, keen, uplifted by fierce enthusiasm,
stirred by emotions which make these fellows very dan-
gerous to their enemy. I saw them coming to the relief
of our hard-pressed troops, and it was a sight which made
one's pulse beat, and gave one a sense of new security when
the full menace was upon us. These Australians came
swinging down towards the old Somme battlefields with the
spirit of men to the rescue of great causes. It was their
business along the line of the Somme, for did they not
take Pozieres, and is not that blasted slope hallowed for all
of them by memorials of their own dead, and by the graves
of many comrades? "We will take Pozieres back," they
said, "it's our job." To those who fought there under the
months of furious fire which broke the earth to fine pow-
der, who went up from Le Sars and into Bapaume on that
famous day a year ago, the news that the enemy had come
pouring back over that ground was a shock and a chal-
lenge.

They waited impatiently for the call to come, in their
lines elsewhere. Every hour their impatience grew.
"When are we going down? It's a darned shame we are
not on our way." At last the call came, and down the
roads the Australians came marching with their easy slouch-
ing step, with their guns and transport and cookers. It was
like men coming back after foreign travels to the old home
threatened by invasion. In all the villages behind the

264 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Somme battlefields they were known. At the sight of their
slouch hats and their long, clean-shaven "mugs" the vil-
lagers came out shouting and cheering. "Les Australiens!
Vive les Australiens." Old women came running to them,
plucking their loose sleeves, patting their brawny shoulders.
Girls waved to them, cheering with shrill voices. And these
fellows grinned, and said, "That's all right. Don't you
be afraid, kid ; we will give 'em Hell."

On transport wagons gipsy-looking fellows sat, looking
down on these scenes with their arms round their dogs.
Australian gunners, hard as the steel of their 18-pounders,
rode their mules through the market towns. They were
eager to begin work. Long columns of Australian in-
fantry marched day and night to get to the fighting-lines,
and when I looked down these lines of clean-cut hatchet
faces the splendour of these men, the grim spirit of them,
stirred me with a sense of historic drama. The New
Zealanders followed, spick and span, debonair, lads, with
the red ribbon round their hats, ruddier than the Austral-
ians, like country boys from English orchards. It was a
glory on the roads as they passed.

Very soon after they went into the battle-line there were
things doing. They sent out patrols and cleared No Man's
Land of the Germans. They caught the enemy in ambushes
and raked him with bullets, and brought in prisoners and
machine-guns. They slaughtered him in several small at-
tacks, and drove him out of the villages and woods and
scared him horribly by day and night. Australians who
came out since the Somme battles, who have heard endless
stories of Pozieres and Bapaume with envy, because they
were not in that epic of their brothers, scouted round and
said, "Well, nobody can say now we haven't seen the
Somme, and when are we going up to Pozieres?"

New Zealand boys have gone out on perilous adventures
and rounded up many Germans. The day after the arrival
of these forces I met several of their lads, lightly wounded
by machine-gun bullets. "We were a bit rash," said one

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 265

of them; "we put our heads into it." But they were sure
the enemy would get no further.

English, Irish and Scottish troops, who bore the ter-
rific shook of the German assaults on the first day of these
battles, and fought ten days back to our present lines, de-
serve what rest they now can get, like Ulysses and his men
after their long voyage. It is impossible for me to nar-
rate all that I have heard and know about those rear-guard
fights, because historic episodes are so crowded that one's
pen cannot write them quickly enough. On that great
stretch of battlefields, sixty miles long and twenty deep,
there were crowds of our men all fighting backwards, with
the enemy pressing them close and leaving lines of dead
in their wake, and each brigade of ours, each battalion, has
its own crowded history.

Among these men were Ulster soldiers, Inniskillings,
Royal Irish Rifles, and others of the 36th Division — and
their history is typical of all that happened. The enemy
broke through on their right flank on March 21 below St.-
Quentin, and in a fog, so thick that our machine-gunners
could not see fifty yards ahead, streamed through in col-
umns. The Inniskilling Fusiliers held on to their forward
redoubts, including one known as the Racecourse Redoubt,
until almost surrounded, and then, with other Ulster com-
rades, fell back beyond the canal, blowing up bridges and
fighting desperately to defend the bridgeheads against in-
cessant attacks. The enemy struck in between these
Ulster troops and battalions of Manchesters, Bedfords,
Yorkshires, and Scottish Fusiliers of the 30th Division on
their left, as well as between the Ulstermen and the 14th
Division, and it was necessary to draw back towards Ham.
At 1145 on tnat morning a report was received, saying
that Germans had broken through on both sides of the
Epine de Dallon, south of St.-Ouentin, and Manchester Re-
doubt. Five minutes later the 108th Brigade of the Ul-
ster Division reported the enemy through Gruchies valley.
The gravest news came when it was reported that the Ger-

266 THE WAY TO VICTORY

mans had broken through the 14th Division and were at-
tacking Essigny Station. The 108th Brigade was ordered
to form a flank west of Essigny and join up with the 14th
on their right at Lezorolles. During night all these bri-
gades of the Ulstermen were withdrawn to the north side
of the canal, and blew up the bridges. Early on the morn-
ing of the 22nd the 61 st Brigade of the 20th Division held
the bridgeheads at Tugny and St.-Simon, south of Ar-
temps, but the Germans drove between the 30th and 36th
(Ulster) Divisions and compelled a further withdrawal
to the Somme defences, where for a time they were still
covered by the brigade of the 20th holding the bridge-
heads. The enemy was advancing steadily towards Ham
on the left flank of the Ulstermen from Jussy to Flavy le
Martel, and there was a gap at Esmery Hallon, between
the 30th and 36th Divisions. To fill up the gap 200 men
from a headquarters staff, clerks, servants, and signallers,
assembled, and with great gallantry these men held their
ground. Pioneer battalions, among them "Young Citi-
zens" of Belfast, were given rifles, and became a fighting
force which beat off heavy attacks.

The enemy was always trying to surround these Ulster-
men, and once 200 Germans got behind divisional head-
quarters and were flung out after sharp fighting by staff
officers and men. An officer sent through a message, say-
ing, "I am writing this with one hand, and firing a rifle
with the other." After continual rear-guard actions for
five days down to the old German trenches across the Roye
road, the Ulster troops were supported by French battal-
ions, but were still called upon to fight while the French
relief was in progress, although at one time only 300 men
could be mustered with strength enough to go into action.
During the last days of the withdrawal a staff officer of
the division and an officer of the Royal Irish Rifles were
captured in a motor-car by a German cavalry patrol. Ger-
man officers took them prisoners, but left the car. Later
another German patrol captured an Ulster ambulance

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 267

driver, but on the way met a French patrol advancing in
the darkness of night. The ambulance man shouted out
"English prisoner," and when the French soldiers fired
some shots the German took to flight. The Irish am-
bulance driver went back, salved the derelict motor-car,
which it punctured with bullet holes, and brought it back
safely. Afterwards this gallant man spent all that night
rescuing wounded. This is but an outline of a narrative,
full of strange, thrilling episodes, in which the men of
Ulster fought as heroes. So did many other brave men
in those days of crisis a week ago.

Nothing is nobler or more tragic in its nobility than the
last stand of the 16th Manchester of the 30th Division in
a redoubt called after their own name near St.-Quentin.
When the enemy was all round them they held on here,
serving their machine-guns. By means of a buried cable
they were able to get messages through for some time.
The last words came from the commanding officer about
3.20 in the afternoon, when he was slightly wounded. He
spoke calmly, even cheerily, but said they could not hold
out much longer as practically every man was hit, and the
Germans were swarming around.

'The Manchesters will defend this redoubt to the last
moment," said this gallant officer. These were his last
words, and the redoubt was overwhelmed.

Scottish Fusiliers, Bedfords, Yorkshires, King's Liver-
pools, and South Lancashire Pioneers fought an astound-
ing number of rear-guard actions from Roupy and Holnon
Wood back to Ham, and killed a great number of the en-
emy, who were like wolves about them. A party of Scot-
tish Fusiliers, who failed to get the order to withdraw,
stayed on till the officer felt very lonely, and discovered
that the enemy was two miles to the rear of him. He led
his men out, and they marched down the road at night
with the Germans all round them. Twice they were chal-
lenged in the darkness, but no attack was made on them,
and they reached our lines near Ham safely after this ex-

268 THE WAY TO VICTORY

traordinary adventure. Odd units of the 20th Division
covered the retirement of the worn-out 30th, and held Ham
with stragglers and men from the Corps Training School
and any fellow from any unit who could stand up with a
rifle, until the enemy broke through to Ham in the early
morning of March 23. There was a hard rear-guard ac-
tion at Verlaine by the Scottish Fusiliers, Bedfords, three
battalions of King's Liverpools, the South Lancashire Pio-
neers, and the 23rd entraining Battalion, who fell back un-
der increasing pressure to the Nord Canal, and held a line
between Liberamont and Bouverchy. The Germans were
hard on their heels that night of the 24th, and were in the
village of Esmery Hallon almost before they had left.
Again and again, after reaching places where they hoped to
rest awhile, these men were called to fight again, and once
had to rush out of billets at Arvillers, near Haugest, to
throw themselves across the road and bar the enemy's way.
While near the village of Bouchoir, near Roye road, they
saw a column of German transport crossing this road and
turning down in the direction where they were in ambush.
The Scottish Fusiliers wanted to let this transport pass
them, so that they could bag the lot, but could not be re-
strained from firing too soon. They emptied German sad-
dles at twenty yards, and captured some wagons, a water-
cart, and a field-cooker. The rest of the transport gal-
loped away wildly, and caused confusion in the German
lines. So at last these men were relieved, and they stag-
gered with fatigue and lack of sleep, like thousands of
other men who had been fighting for a week or more across
those same fields of war.

April 3
One of the most astonishing things in this war is the way
in which the vitality of youth recovers from the overwhelm-
ing fatigues of battle, and from its breaking strain upon
every quivering nerve of our human body. I have de-
scribed the weariness of our soldiers after a week or more

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 269

of fighting over the Somme battle-grounds, yet nothing I
have said can give more than a faint idea of the exhaustion
cf many of these poor lads of ours, after those bad days
when the enemy was all about them and trying to break
between them, and they knew that they must hold them or
we should lose all that we have and are.

Highlanders of the 51st Division, Black Watch, Gor-
dons, Camerons, Argyll, and Sutherland men, are as tough
as any men in our armies, yet some of their officers told
me that on the last lap of their rear-guard actions they
were tired almost to death, and when called on to make one
last effort, after six days and nights of fighting and march-
ing, many of them staggered up like men who had been
chloroformed, with dazed eyes and grey and drawn faces,
speechless, deaf to words spoken to them, blind to the men-
ace about them, seemingly at the last gasp of strength.

So it was with West Riding troops of the 62nd Division
round about Bucquoy, where they had dug a line of defence
after beating off attacks at Puisieux early in the battle.
They were assaulted five times, all day and night, by the
1st Guards Reserve and 3rd German Guards, who had di-
rect orders to take Bucquoy, and they beat off these waves
with frightful losses to the enemy and the loss of many of
our own good men. On the 27th the enemy got into Ros-
signol Wood, from which a year ago I saw them retreat,
and the Yorkshiremen were called on to turn them out,
which they did. Next day they were attacked all along
the line, and repulsed the German Guards everywhere; and
for the two following days were fighting patrols inces-
santly. The Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment
fought most gallantly, and in one week these men and their
comrades took prisoners from seven German divisions,
showing the weight of the numbers against them. A bat-
talion of Yorkshire Light Infantry had hard luck in a mo-
ment of crisis, for the enemy swept over a bit of trench
— one of the old German trenches derelict for twelve months
till then — and when they turned to take these men in the

270 THE WAY TO VICTORY

rear, another wave followed on and caught these Yorkshires
in the back. One platoon was isolated and fought most
gallantly, refusing to surrender.

"All my men are very cheery, but very tired," was the
report of their general at the most critical time. "Being
attacked," he says, "was the only thing that kept them

awake."

Towards the end of this fighting they had a drunken
craving for sleep; and slept standing with their heads
falling against the parapet, slept sitting hunched in ditches,
slept like dead men when they lay on open ground. But
they waked again when the enemy attacked once more and
fought him and killed him, and dozed off again. In body
and brain these men of ours were tired to the point of
death. They were footsore, and their limbs were stiff, and
they felt like old, old men. That is the astounding thing.
Yesterday I went again among those Highlanders, who
fought so long and so hard, and upon my faith it was al-
most impossible to believe that they were the same men.
Their pipers were marching up and down the roads play-
ing "Highland Laddie" and other tunes of Scotland, and
the Gordons and the Seaforths and the Argylls stood about
in the evening sunshine like men on a village green, taking
their ease in times of peace. Their kilts were dirty and
stained, but they had washed off the dirt of battle and
shaved, and cleaned their steel hats, and the tiredness had
gone out of their eyes, and their youth had come back to
them.

A colonel of the Seaforths came round the corner, with
his bonnet cocked to a jaunty angle. He had been through
hell fire, but there was no smoulder of it in his smiling eyes
as I saluted him. Early in the German attack on March
21 the enemy worked round behind his battalion headquar-
ters in the fog, having pierced down the gully of the Queant-
Pronville Valley after a frightful bombardment which de-
stroyed our defensive works there. With the colonel was
a padre and a doctor in his dug-out, and when the machine-

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 271

gun bullets came, like the crack of whips outside, he said
to them : "You had better get back, the enemy is pretty
close." They obeyed his order and went out, but were cap-
tured at once by the German troops swarming down. The
6th and 7th Black vVatch had been practically cut off.

Away in the front line was a gunner officer in an ob-
servation post with a telephone. He spoke over the wire.
"There are Boches in the reserve line," he said. Then,
after a short silence, "there are Boches in my trench." Then
some other words came down the telephone, "they are
bombing my o-pip." Those were the last words he spoke.

In another post with a telephone a Scottish officer kept
up messages for half an hour, though the enemy had
streamed behind him.

At two o'clock that day the enemy having driven south-
east by Boursies got into Doignies, retaken for a time, as
I have told before, by Tanks and English troops of the
19th Division. But the enemy's progress made things hard
for the Highlanders, who were in danger of being out-
flanked, and orders were given for withdrawal. Next day
the enemy followed them up, and attacked in three waves
near Hermies, and were flung back with exceedingly heavy
losses.

Groups of the 7th Argylls were posted in sunken roads
by Demicourt, and their machine-guns swept down platoons
and companies of Germans who came within the field of
fire. The Guards who attacked them came over not in steel
helmets, but in pickelhaube, for pride and glory. Others
who came against the Scots were the famous "Cockchafers,"
or Maikaefer, whose regiment was cut up by Welsh bat-
talions on Pilkem Ridge. But it was necessary to with-
draw again, as the enemy was advancing on the left by
Morchies and Vaux Vraucourt and Beaumetz.

There were a number of heavy guns in Beaumetz, and
the Highlanders were determined to save them at all risks.
At night steam-tractors went up into the village, with Ger-
mans close to them all round, and hitched their caterpillars

272 THE WAY TO VICTORY

to the guns and brought them out under the very noses of
the enemy, and saved every one.

The Pioneers of the Highland regiments, with field-com-
manders of engineers and odd units, made a perimeter de-
fence of Beugny, with a body of 6th Gordons commanded
by an officer who has appeared in many of my little pictures
of this war since the Battle of Loos and the days at Martin-
puich, when he served with other Gordons — the 8-ioth —
of that gay and gallant crowd. Wounded in the battle of
Flanders, he had only come back to France a little while,
and now, outside Beugny, was wounded again in the leg.
His men carried him out on a stretcher, and on the way
back he was wounded again in the leg. The enemy was
still advancing like a tide. While English troops of the
41st Division held the lines outside Bapaume, the Jocks
passed through these ruins, refreshing themselves in an
abandoned canteen where there were fresh eggs and bis-
cuits, and so came to Loupart Wood, which overlooks a
great stretch of that desolate world of Somme battlefields,
where thousands of little white crosses tell of strife that
passed over this mangled earth. Over old places, like Pys
and Miraumont, where they had fought two years before,
these Highlanders marched now, leaning against each other,
some holding hands like children, falling into deeps of sleep
whenever they halted for a brief spell, with the enemy try-
ing to encircle them, and with heroic rear-guard actions
being fought all round them.

A queer, friendly message came to them almost at the
journey's end. It was from the enemy, sent over in a
small balloon :

"Good old $ist Division. Sticking it yet. Cheery oh!"

That balloon and message now belong to a Scottish
sergeant, who would not part with them for any gold.

Some of the most resolute rear-guard fighting in these
recent battles was done by some battalions of Manchester
and other Lancashire troops of the 42nd Division round

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 273

about Bihucourt, Bucquoy, and Ayette — that village was
recaptured to-day by a brilliant little attack — when the
enemy was pouring down over the Arras-Bapaume road.

After beating off the enemy and restoring the line
through Ervillers, Behagnies, and Sapignies, these men
were ordered to hold another line further back, and in the
most orderly way, as though on field manoeuvres, made that
movement in three stages in face of the enemy. To cover
their withdrawal, they made three counter-attacks with their
rear-guards, and Lancashire Fusiliers swept into Behagnies
at bayonet-point. It was not the only bayonet charge made
by these Lancashire troops. The 6th Manchesters broke
the German line near Ablainzeville, and brought out a num-
ber of German officers and men as prisoners, with several
machine-guns. It was the Manchesters also who attacked
Bihucourt with Tanks on the afternoon of March 25 and
cleared it of the enemy until fresh hordes bore down. From
the first these Lancashire men fought with grim, fierce
spirit, to hold back the enemy tide.

A crowd of men of Yorkshire took their band with
them into battle "for sake of swank," said one of their of-
ficers who is proud of it, and that music playing gay tunes
with beat of drums was like wine to weary men, and
cheered up all the troops in their neighbourhood.

No historian will ever be able to tell in full the narrative
of the last twelve days, with all the adventures of thou-
sands of men moving across barren country with masses of
Germans on their flanks, where every man had had hair-
breadth escapes, and every battalion an historic episode,
and every division an Iliad of its own.

I wonder if the people at home are tired of reading of
these things, bored with what I write, wishing I had time
and strength to tell much more, to pay some small tribute
to all those brave fellows who do not ask for praise, but
like to think that their folk at home know what they have
done to save their country in its hours of gravest danger,

274 THE WAY TO VICTORY

at all risks of life and limb, and to the very last ounce of
their bodily strength. The writing of these things is eas-
ier than the doing of them. The reading of them is easier
still, so easy that it may make no deep impression on the
imagination and heart of the world. To us out here, meet-
ing these men, seeing the look of them after their battles,
knowing the ground over which they came, hearing the
shell-fire that came out of woods and roads on their way,
and having a clear knowledge of their danger and suffering
and sacrifice, greater than I can put into words, in a battle
more stupendous than the mind can picture, all the crowds
of men who have come through seem like supernatural be-
ings, men who have passed through the gates of death, he-
roes of a mythology which we know to be true.

They are just simple lads, nobodies, as a friend of mine
calls them, not endowed with supernatural qualities, not
even braver than men in the bulk, not finding any sport in
all this, not indifferent to death or pain or the fright of high
explosives, yet sticking it, fighting through, never giving
up their pride of spirit because they knew that every old
thing was up against them, and if they failed all might be
lost. So to get a salute from one of these private soldiers
is an honour, as though a great captain saluted one, and to
talk with any officer who has been through these things
fills one with a sense of having been in touch with some fa-
mous character of history. For what these men have done,
these nobodies, whose names are unknown, who have come
from little villas in London, and from Lancashire ware-
houses, and Yorkshire moors, and the sweet Devonshire
lanes, and the wide Scottish moors, and the wet moist wind
of southern Ireland, and the streets of Belfast, will be fa-
mous for all time in history, and any man who fought down
from the Cambrai salient or St.-Quentin will be like those
who were with Henry at Agincourt. And the fewer men
the greater share of honour; for there were not enough of
them against the German tides, yet enough to save us all.

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 275

April 4
Our capture of the village of Ayette yesterday with six
officers and nearly 200 men was heartening to our troops as
a sign that the tide is turning against the enemy.

Those German storm troops who passed, division through
division, and in vast numbers surged after our rear-guards
on to the Somme battlefields and across the country of their
old retreat beyond Bapaume and Peronne, leaving a wake
of dead and wounded behind them all the way, have not
come into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor into
cities good to sack. They have behind them now, as we
had behind us, many miles deep of awful desolation. There
is no cover there from wind or rain or high explosives,
no billets in which weary soldiers may find dry beds and
warmth, no roofs to any houses, no houses to any shell-
broken walls. Far beyond the Somme battlefield and the
furthest range of our guns in 1916, the enemy himself laid
waste to everything that could be blown up or burnt. He
made a bonfire of Bapaume and its surrounding hamlets.
He wrecked all the beauty of Peronne, with its Renaissance
houses and public buildings. With torches and axes and
explosive charges he destroyed all the habitations over a
long belt of country, so that when our men followed they
should have no kind of comfort and be aghast at this deso-
lation. Now they have come back to that waste of their
own making, and back across the battlefields of the Somme,
where, for many miles more it is more frightful, because
every kilometre of this earth is a ghastly reminder to these
Germans of the things they suffered there, of their blood
that flowed there in that old blood-bath of the Somme,
as they called it, and of the agonies and tortures in the
ditches which still wind through this mangled earth,
though filled now with rank grass, hiding the bones of men
and half-buried bodies. Not a pleasant place for German
divisions behind their present battle-lines, not more pleas-
ant than a cold, wet hell, where the spectres of slaughtered

276 THE WAY TO VICTORY

men crowd at night round the German sentries and masses
of men sleeping under rain-soaked blankets.

It has been raining hard these two nights past and this
morning, and I know what those fields of the Somme up
by Contaimaison and Courcelette and along the valley of
the Ancre look like after rain. I know how sticky is the
earth there at Pozieres, so that one's feet sink into its
slime. I know how deep are those rain-filled shell-holes,
and how those undrained trenches become rivers.

For the German gunners, trying to drag up field artil-
lery or long-range guns, there is now bog to come through.
It is hard work for the German field-companies, pressed
furiously to lay narrow gauge lines over these deserts, ac-
cording to the orders of the High Command, who insist
on the lines being run out almost as quickly as their men
advance in the attack, so that the material of war may
be brought up. Their rail-heads and dumps are in the
mud through which our men struggled in the winter of
1 9 1 6, and their transport is wallowing in ruts and old
wrecked trenches. All that spells delay in their plans and
loss of life.

For they are not resting quietly in this waste below the
dripping skies. Our guns are harassing all this open coun-
try with heavy shells. By day and night our aeroplanes
are out with tons of bombs, keeping important cross-roads
under deadly fire, so that their transport has had to aban-
don some main roads and take to wild tracks across crater
land; bombing bodies of men lying in the open or in col-
umn of march, pouring high explosives down on their am-
munition dumps, rail-heads, aerodromes, and assembly
places. There is terror for the enemy over these fields in
daylight and darkness, for our flying men have gone out
in squadrons to scatter death and destruction among them.
This work has reached fantastic heights of horror for
the German troops under the menace of it. There have
been times when I believe we have had as many as 300
aeroplanes up at one time. One squadron alone on one

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 277

night dropped six tons of bombs over enemy concentra-
tions, and each man went out six times. Another squad-
ron went out four times in one night, and was bombing
for eleven hours. When the enemy was advancing in masses
our flying men flew as low as ioo feet, dropping bombs
among them, and firing into them with machine-guns.
They attacked German patrols of cavalry, and scattered
them, and machine-gunned trenches full of men and bat-
teries in action and transport crowding down narrow roads.
They fought German scouts and crashed them, and there
are several cases in which they fought German aeroplanes
at night, so that it was like a fight between vampire bats
up there where the clouds were touched by the moon-
light. The enemy retaliates as best he can, and suddenly
into the quiet villages behind our lines comes the noise of
bursting shells like a salvo of heavy guns, as in a village
where I was on Tuesday, and the peasants driving their
carts or children playing in the roadway are killed or
wounded by the thunderbolts out of the grey sky. It is
not a pleasant kind of war. The cruelty of it all sickens
one, and the nightmare of it darkens one's spirit. The
enemy is as ruthless of civilian life as of any other, and in
addition to his bombing of innocent places ranges his long
guns onto remote little towns where old market women are
selling their poultry, and girls are cleaning their shop win-
dows, and war until then has seemed far away.

Yesterday I went again among some of the men who
have come back, and all the time as I moved among them
and saw them marching the last lap and settling into billets
in an old French village and greeting comrades whom they
had given up for lost, and prefacing the story of their own
adventures with queer gusts of laughter, as men who have
seen strange things and had amazing luck, those words
kept ringing through my head and heart, "the men who have
come back," "the men who have come back," like some old
song. . . . Yes, there were some more of them, and one
among them whom I desired to see most among these men

278 THE WAY TO VICTORY

who have come back from great peril in ten days of bat-
tle. They were men of Sussex and Hampshire and many
other counties, and they marched with their transport on
that last lap from the battle-lines, through country like
their own southern shires of England. Sweat poured down
their faces after coming down the long trail with the enemy
about them, and they walked stiffly, with drag of feet.
But most of them looked wonderfully hard and fit, and
they came whistling down winding lanes which led to vil-
lages, with Norman gateways and high, gabled houses, and
little old churches and market-places of quaint architec-
ture. They dumped their packs in the market-place, teth-
ered their horses next to the church, and searched around
for their billets. It was good — a good picture for any ar-
tist. Some of the officers had their billet in an estaminet,
and round its table gathered a group of engineers who have
been making counter-attacks as well as trenches, and blow-
ing up Germans as well as bridges, and holding gaps in the
line and acting as machine-gunners and riflemen as well as
doing their own job of field-companies. They had lost
their transport by an accident on a crowded road. They
had lost their commanding officer and other good com-
rades, but now the men who came back would be able to
rest awhile after that long trail back from Chalk Quarry,
near our old front lines, where I saw them last before the
battle. With few francs in their pockets they had bought
teacups and a coffee-pot which would do for tea, and they
had some margarine in a tin and some ration bread, and
now sat down for the first time to a mess table again. But
the billeting officer, a young Scotsman, slept like a tired
child between his bites of bread and butter, waking up with
a start when a brother officer jerked his elbow, and a cap-
tain drowsed in the middle of a story of how a transport
was destroyed; and a lieutenant of engineers, with a bul-
let mark down his cheek, did not remember the day of the
week on which anything had happened, because the nights
had merged into days, and there was no sleep, and no reck-

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 279

oning of time in the wild nightmare of rear-guard actions.

It was in a village crowded with French and British
troops — clumps of khaki and bouquets of blue, all min-
gled in market-square — that I met the man I most wanted
to meet. He was a gunner officer lost in the turmoil of
battle for twelve days past, and now among the men who
have come back. There was a greeting of "Hullo, old
man!" which is the usual greeting of those who meet after
this battle, and then laughing stories of a hot time and
field-guns fighting an eight days' rear-guard action, kill-
ing Germans at close range with open sights, galloping
off to take up new positions, unlimbering again for an-
other action, nearly surrounded a dozen times, but back at
last.

I have a coloured rag as souvenir of that battery's ac-
tion, and I shall keep it in safe custody. It is a French
tricolour scarf given to this brigade of artillery by a French
officer as a token of esteem for valour. It is a good bit
of colour beside me as I write, and a reminder of the gal-
lant men — the men who have come back, not forgetting
those good comrades who will never come back.

April 5
Heavy attacks by the enemy are in progress to-day north
of the Somme from Albert to Aveluy Wood against our
12th, 63rd, and 17th Divisions. As far as my knowledge
goes up to the hour of writing, when there is not such cer-
tain news, their only gain this morning was to bite off a
small salient opposite the village of Dernancourt, across the
railway from Amiens to Albert. We are now counter-
attacking them at this place.

The enemy's attack was in considerable strength — I be-
lieve it may be reckoned as something like six German
divisions on a battle-front of some 9000 yards, or one regi-
ment to every 600 yards, which is rather formidable odds
against our men. It became clear this morning that they
have used the past few days of comparative inactivity to get

280 THE WAY TO VICTORY

many of their guns over the bogged ground of the Somme
battlefields, for their barrage-lire, which preceded the attack,
was heavy and deep, reaching to villages several thousand
yards behind our front.

Our troops in this district are defending their positions
resolutely, and first reports indicate that the German storm
troops are suffering under our machine-gun fire after being
shelled in their assembly places by our heavy and field
artillery, so that once again the spilling of German blood
goes on apace.

Further north there is separate fighting in progress to-day
round about the village of Ayette — such a wretched little
place of brickdust and broken walls when I saw it last on the
way from Arras to Bapaume — and the enemy is trying to
recapture this place which we took from him two days ago.

South of the Somme to-day most of the fighting was
against French troops, so that I know very little about it,
because the army of our Allies is outside my province.
English troops fought shoulder to shoulder with the "For-
get-me-nots," as the pollus call themselves, and the action
was very fierce on both sides. The enemy had a prodigious
number of men engaged, and from twelve to fourteen Ger-
man divisions have been identified, including three Guards'
divisions. These are the 3rd, commanded by Prince Eitel
Friedrich, who commanded the attack on Fort Douaumont
in the Battle of Verdun; the Guards' reserve division; the
4th Guards Division ; and elements of the famous Branden-
burg Corps. The main result of the day's fighting, which
was of extreme severity, was the enemy's gain of the village
of Hamel, south-east of Corbie, on the Somme, somewhat
straightening the line of his advance in the direction of
Amiens. It is quite obvious that if his intention is to strike
for Amiens itself along the valley of the Somme, challeng-
ing another great battle and our forces in liaison with the
French, he must at all costs push forward his line across the
little River Ancre, north of Albert, in order to avoid an
acute salient. I have no doubt that this is the object of his

THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE 281

attack in that neighbourhood to-day, for already his salient
south of the Somme is so dangerous to him that our field-
guns are shooting his men in the back.

From what I could gather to-day the present action is
merely a straightening-out process by the enemy, and is not
another great drive, which I believe he will certainly at-
tempt later if his object is attained in these manceuvrings
for positions. Meanwhile we keep him pinned across the
Ancre and hold our flank firmly on the north bank of the
Somme, east of Amiens. Our troops there are fighting
with the most dogged resolution to foil his plans.

New Zealanders, Australians, and other troops, in sharp
actions with initiative on their side, captured this morning
120 and 130 prisoners in two assaults on the enemy's line,
not including several officers. These troops of ours are full
of spirit, and the enemy is having a bad time from their
activities.

April 8
Last night and early to-day the enemy's guns were firing
heavily along parts of our line, and this morning, when I
went south of the Somme, this bombardment continued.
It is almost beyond doubt preparatory to another phase of
the German offensive, in which they may again attempt to
drive a wedge between us and the French. They have still
large concentrations of troops north and south of the river,
and as the days pass they are bringing more guns into posi-
tion. At the same time they are demonstrating further
north, by very heavy shell-fire around Arras, and further
north than that, by Armentieres and La Bassee Canal, where
they put over many gas shells last night. It is quite possible
that they will make another strong attempt to turn our de-
fences round Arras, while at the same time striking hard
for Amiens, and hoping by success south of the Somme to
make our positions untenable from Albert above the valley
of the Ancre. Those are obvious intentions, as clear as
sunlight to the enemy, so that we need make no mystery of

282 THE WAY TO VICTORY

them to ourselves, but there is a wide gulf between intention
and achievement, and German storm troops have learnt very
painful, tragic lessons lately, which have given pause to
their High Command. Nevertheless, their menace is
serious, and will only be thwarted this time, as before, by
the enormous courage of our troops.

There was a heavy wet mist this morning, amounting to
a thick white fog in low-lying ground, and it was such a
morning as that of March 21, when the German avalanche
began to move. With the noise of loud gun-fire in con-
tinuous thunder-rolls, it seemed to me certain that another
great battle was beginning, but no reports had been re-
ceived up to midday, and I could get no news of any im-
portant German action. But the storm of battle may break
out again at any moment, and upon the issue of this next
phase depends the enemy hopes and our security.

PART IV
THE NORTHERN ATTACK

The Drive Across to Lys

April 9

A heavy and determined attack was begun against us this
morning a considerable distance north of our recent battles,
on about eleven miles of front, between Armentieres and
the La Bassee Canal. So far as news comes to us up to this
afternoon, the enemy has succeeded in driving through our
outpost lines, while our troops are holding him by Givenchy
on the right and about Fleurbaix on the left.

This new attack was preceded by a long, concentrated
bombardment, which has gradually been increasing during
the last day or two, until it reached wild heights of fury last
night and early this morning. The enemy has used poison
gas in immense quantities, and it may be estimated that
during the night he flung over 60,000 gas shells in order to
create a wide zone of this evil vapour and stupefy our gun-
ners, transport, and infantry if they were caught without
their masks, which is improbable. His gun-fire reached out
to many towns and villages behind our lines, like Bethune
and Armentieres, Vermelles and Philosophe, Merville and
Estaires, and this did not cease round Armentieres until
11.30 this morning, though further south, from Fleurbaix,
his infantry attack was in progress at an early hour, cer-
tainly by eight o'clock, and his barrage lifted in order to let
his troops advance. The strength of his attack is not yet

283

284 THE WAY TO VICTORY

known with any certainty, but three divisions are in that
area, including the 44th Reserve, the 81st and the 10th
Ersatz, and it is probable that he has other forces engaged.

Part of our line was held by Portuguese troops, who, for
a long time, have been between Laventie and Neuve
Chapelle holding positions which were subject to severe
raids from time to time. They are now in the thick of this
battle, most fiercely beset, and unfortunately giving ground
too rapidly.

It is a battle over old and famous ground, where, early in
this war, there was most deadly strife during the struggle
round Neuve Chapelle in March of 191 5, and at Festubert.
It is ground where our Indian infantry attacked again and
again with most gallant courage, and where, afterwards, the
survivors held the lines through the spring and summer,
so that the flat fields all round, with fringes of willows
along the narrow canals that intersect all this moist land
and villages beyond, like Estaires and Laventie and places
of ruin like La Gorgue and Richebourg and Ouinque Rue,
will be for ever haunted with memories of those dark-eyed
men who to French peasants seemed fairylike princes and
figures out of Arabian Nights' tales. They disappeared
long ago, through the mists of these flats, to other fighting
fields, in other countries.

Suddenly the enemy has struck, and the centre of strife
for a moment has shifted. It is an awkward ground for
attack, and bad weather for such ground, because the enemy
has to advance across dead-flat marshes, cut through and
through by an intricate system of canals, which must be all
flooded now, after heavy rain and shell-fire, which has
broken the banks. All the enemy's efforts this morning
do not seem to have carried him far through those marshes,
and up to the time I write his storm troops are being held
back and shattered by machine-gun fire before Givenchy,
outside an outpost in the marshes sap, and at a place called
Picantin, in front of Laventie. If he gets no farther, his
venture will be futile except as a demonstration in order

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 285

to weaken our reserves by further casualties and increase
the strain on our main defence. Meanwhile his own losses
must be reaching prodigious figures. To-day again many
of his men lie dead in those swamps by Neuve Chapelle.

April io
In my message yesterday I told as much as was known
of the attack which began in the morning against the Brit-
ish and Portuguese troops between Armentieres and
Givenchy, on the La Bassee Canal, the strength and purpose
of it being then uncertain. It is now clear that this battle,
still in progress to-day, is a new and formidable offensive
with large objectives, and is not merely a demonstration to
withdraw our troops from the area of the Somme. It is
also made certain by this new thrust that the German High
Command have decided to throw the full weight of their
armies against us in an endeavour to destroy our forces in
Northern France instead of dividing their efforts by strik-
ing also at the French.

I believe their plan is to edge off as much as possible
from the French armies, holding them in check by defensive
fighting and counter-attacks, in order to concentrate their
masses of men and guns opposite the British lines and hurl
them in a series of blows, now on our right and now on our
left, following each success as far as its possibilities admit.
It is a menace which calls for the supreme effort of the
armies of the nation and the Allies.

Yesterday, the enemy struck north on our left, beginning,
as I have said, in the flat grounds opposite Neuve Chapelle
as the centre of the thrust, with Fleurbaix north and
Givenchy south, and extending this morning further north
still, above Armentieres, and including the ridge of Mes-
sines. The 34th and 40th Divisions were on the left of the
Portuguese, and the 55th on their right.

As yesterday, so to-day, they have succeeded in break-
ing through parts of our first defensive systems, and their
threat this morning was most vehement in the neighbour-

286 THE WAY TO VICTORY

hood of Estaires, although our counter-attacks have since
driven the enemy back part of the way. Enormous gun-
fire was directed against our positions along all this line last
night again, after yesterday morning's bombardment, and
continued without pause through a very unquiet night,
when all through the hours this tumult of great guns beat
upon one's ears with continued drum-fire, and all the sky
was full of flame and light.

This morning, again, when I went up into French Flan-
ders and through villages which the enemy has been shell-
ing, regardless of women and children there, this frightful
unceasing thunder was as loud as ever and told one without
further news that the battle was still going on and that the
Germans were extending its zone.

I have told in my previous message the first outline of
what happened yesterday, but there is more to tell. The
great achievement of the day on the part of our troops en-
gaged was the magnificent stand of the 55th Division — all
Lancashire troops — who held our right flank firm against
fierce, repeated attacks, some four times stronger than them-
selves in numbers, and who, when the Portuguese troops on
their left were broken, formed flank on their left, and so
withstood the enemy's hammer blows that at the end of the
day and this morning our line was still unbroken there.
Givenchy was still ours, and the enemy's waves of men lay
shattered in front of them, and 750 prisoners were in our
hands.

It was a tragedy for the Portuguese that the heaviest
bombardment, in a storm of gun-fire as atrocious in its fury
as anything of the kind since March 21, was directed
against the centre which they held. It was annihilating
to their outposts and smashed their front-line defences,
which were stoutly held. It beat backwards and forwards
in waves of high explosives from the trench line opposite
Neuve Chapelle to the second line opposite Fauquissart and
Richebourg St. Vaast. Large numbers of heavy guns also
searched behind these defence systems for cross-roads, am-

THE NORTHERN ATTACK

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GERMAN ATTACK IN FLANDERS, APRIL 1918

288 THE WAY TO VICTORY

munition dumps, railways, villages, and headquarters of
units, while Portuguese batteries were assailed with gas
shells and flying steel. The Portuguese front line was
overwhelmed by this intensity of bombardment, and their
line had to fall back to the second system. This was at-
tacked by enemy assault troops, and between six and seven
in the morning they had reached Fauquissart. The bar-
rage lifted at seven o'clock for a general attack on the
second line. Here the strongest body of the Portuguese
troops made some kind of a stand, but by eleven o'clock
the Germans had forced a way through to Laventie, and the
position round Fleurbaix was threatened. They were then
holding a line through Richebourg St. Vaast and Laventie,
but it was difficult to make a stand here as the Portuguese
troops had by that time been put out of action.

The Portuguese field artillery served their guns as long
as possible and destroyed the breech blocks whenever it was
inevitable to leave a gun behind. Portuguese gunners at-
tached to our heavy batteries behaved with real courage,
firing and laying and carrying up ammunition all through
the battle under dangerous shelling, and our artillery officers
report that nothing could have been better than the way
they stuck it. One battalion of their infantry also held on
gallantly to Lacouture until two o'clock in the afternoon,
when they were charged by the enemy.

This enemy advance in the centre straight through the
Portuguese put a severe strain upon the 55th, who were
already sustaining terrific attacks on the right by Givenchy.
Many of these Lancashire men had been in their billets
sleeping peacefully when news of the battle came the night
before last, and they had to turn out at once and go straight
to the trenches under an abominable fire.

If all of them were like the lad I met this morning in
charge of an escort of German prisoners, sitting on top of
a ladder, with his steel hat on the back of his head while
he told me of his astounding adventures in the dialect of
Warrington, for all the world like a music-hall comedian,

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 289

in spite of the horrors which he had seen and now
described, they must have been remarkable fellows. Op-
pressed as I was with a sense of tragedy, this boy's mono-
logue, with the snarl of shrapnel as musical accompaniment,
made me laugh, as he sat up there with his funny face say-
ing the drollest things. But it wasn't a comedy at all for
those Lancashire men. It was grim fighting in a bad little
corner of hell. For that was Givenchy yesterday and to-
day. The enemy attacked it in crowds, and captured it in
the morning, in spite of the deadly rifle and machine-gun
fire from these men of the 55th Division. He was hurled
out again by parties of bombers and riflemen, but returned
to the attack and regained half the village. Then in the
night these Lancashire lads, many of them new drafts just
arrived in France, counter-attacked once more, and drove
the enemy clean out and further back than where he had
started. They also took over 700 prisoners, whom I saw
to-day, and a very hefty crowd of grey wolves they were,
in spite of some boys in glasses, who were under the aver-
age size. The rest of them were tall, strapping fellows,
and did not look cowed by their capture. Some of them
had lost their way in the fog, which otherwise was to their
advantage, because in some places they penetrated between
Portuguese posts before they were seen. But one lot
strayed hopelessly, and came into one of our communica-
tion saps.

"Now, boys/' said one of our officers, "get your bombs
ready and shout."

"We did shout," said the Lancashire lad with the funny
face. "Then these Johnnies put up their hands and said
'Kamerad,' just as you read in t' picture papers, and I took
ten of 'em, though I'm only nineteen."

In hard fighting the Lancashires and Yorkshires took
most of their men, and these Germans are crestfallen, for
before the battle a document was read out to them saying
that the 55th Division in front of them was not to be feared
because it was very weak and very tired, and the German

290 THE WAY TO VICTORY

storm troops would be attacking in the proportion of three
regiments to six British companies, and would have no
trouble. On the left beyond the flank of the 55th Division
the situation was more serious, and parties of the enemy
crossed the River Lys and got into the neighbourhood of
Croix du Bac and to the outskirts of Estaires. They were
apparently not in big numbers there, and this morning were
driven back over the Lys. In the centre, where the Portu-
guese were forced to fall back, the weight of the German
attack then fell on the British troops, who fought magnifi-
cent defensive actions. Counter-attacks were also made
with the greatest gallantry. Near another place, called
Huit Maisons, or Eight Houses, some of our men held out
in an outpost for many hours and kept the enemy back by
their fire.

From captured maps and other information it is proved
that the enemy had most ambitious objectives yesterday,
which should have brought him to the outskirts of Bethune
on the canal bank ; but owing to the brave fighting of our
men he was not able to achieve this purpose. Two German
aviators brought down in our lines say that yesterday's
battle was only the beginning of a great attempt north on a
twenty-five-mile front, and this is borne out by the exten-
sion of the attack to-day above Armentieres and up by the
Messines Ridge. Of that most northerly attack I know
as yet little, because I was in a region further south this
morning.

April ii
Yesterday afternoon and to-day the enemy has exerted all
his strength in men and guns in the battle now raging from
the River Lys to Wytschaete, and our troops have been
fighting without respite to hold him on our main defensive
positions and thrust him back from important ground by
repeated counter-attacks.

Once again our men are outnumbered — the same men
like the 50th, 51st, 55th, 9th, 19th, and 25th Divisions who

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 291

fought until they could hardly stand in the week that fol-
lowed March 21. It is only by the courage and stubborn
will of battalions weakened by losses, and of small parties
holding out with grim valour, and of individual soldiers
animating their comrades by acts of brave example that
the enemy has been unable to make rapid progress, and, at
Wytschaete and Messines, has been flung back for a time
with the most bloody losses.

Our men of the 34th and 50th Divisions have had to give
ground along the Lys Canal south of Armentieres, blowing
up bridges behind them and the railway bridge at Armen-
tieres, and the enemy is now trying to thrust forward
south of Merville by bending back our line from Lestrem
and getting his guns across the Lys. This he has been able
to do in some places by temporary bridges, which we have
shelled to pieces as he crossed, and under our fire his engin-
eers are trying to build a stronger bridge south-west of
Erquinghem, where, in happier days, we had a Red Cross
Hospital. We have had to fall back from Armentieres,
holding the line from Nieppe to Steenwerck, and the city
of Armentieres, where once there was gay life even in time
of war, with many bright little restaurants and tea shops,
until the enemy poured shell-fire over them and filled all
the houses and cellars with poison gas, is now a kind of
No Man's Land between the lines.

This morning the ceaseless tumult of gun-fire was loud
and terrible over all this countryside, and there were strange
and thrilling scenes on all the roads leading to the battle
zone, where our infantry and gunners were going forward
to stem the tide, and masses of transport moved, and
civilians passed them in retreat to villages outside the wide
area of shell-range, and wounded men came staggering
down afoot if they could walk, or were brought down by
ambulances threading their way through all this surge and
swirl of war if they were badly hit. No man who had any
strength to walk would use an ambulance wanted for
weaker comrades, and I saw some little groups of English

292 THE WAY TO VICTORY

and Scottish soldiers with bandaged arms and heads stand-
ing about for rest on their way back, chatting quietly to
villagers, old women and girls, mixed up in a most tragic
way with the scenes of war which have suddenly engulfed
their homes as the tide beats closer. Here and there:
stretcher-bearers waited with their burdens on the road-
sides, among them men of the Black Watch of the o/thi
Division with the red heckle in their bonnets, calm and
grave like statues, beside their wounded comrades lying
there with white upturned faces and never a murmur or
groan.

They were the heroes who yesterday, with gallant hearts,
came up at a great pace when the enemy was in Wytschaete
and Messines, and in a fierce counter-attack the South
African Scots of the 9th Division drove him off the crest
of the ridge and dealt him a deadly blow. There on that:
high ground which we won in battle last June, when Eng-
lish and Irish and Islew Zealand troops stormed the ridge
and captured thousands of prisoners, the enemy yesterday-
fell in great numbers, and his dead lie thick, and though he:
came on wave after wave after all his day's agony and'
struggle, he has not gained a yard of the crest, but is;
beaten back to the reverse side of the slope.

I have already told how, south of Armentieres, between*
Neuve Chapelle and Fleurbaix, the centre of our line was.
pressed back by hammer blows against the Portuguese, but.
how the Lancashire men of the 55th Division held firm on
the right wing by Givenchy by attacks and counter-attacks
in which that patch of ruined earth changed hands several
times. Yesterday and to-day the enemy has renewed his
attacks there without success, and though those Lancashire
lads have been hard pressed, they have never given up their
position, and have killed uncountable numbers of German
storm troops. They say that they have wiped out wave
after wave and company after company, but always more
men come, as though with inexhaustible reserves. The;
enemy, repulsed here, tried yesterday to drive further north:,

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 293

where he had gained ground from the 50th Division, and to
cross the Lys Canal north and south of Estaires. In parts
it was shallow enough for his troops to wade, and they tried
to do this, but machine-gun fire of Scottish troops caught
these men in the ditch and heaped it with their bodies.
In the passage of the Lys he was more successful, striking
south of Estaires towards Lestrem, and while pressing
forward higher up by Armentieres.

Yesterday afternoon the situation was anxious for our
men up there. Some Northumberland Fusiliers and Royal
Scots, after desperate fighting against overwhelming odds,
were forced to withdraw from Houplines owing to the
enemy's capture of Ploegsteert — poor old Plug Street
Wood, famous as our training school of war — and at the
same time the enemy's pressure was intense south of
Armentieres, and he crossed the Lys below Erquinghem.

The Northumberland Fusiliers and their comrades of the
34th Division, grievously few compared with the hostile
hordes about them, and almost, though never quite, out of
touch with the troops on the right and the left, took up the
line from the junction of the Armentieres railway with La
Bizet, while at the same time some of them were holding
round Nieppe, very isolated, because the enemy at that time
had penetrated into the village of Steenwerck behind them.

The forces holding Armentieres drew back northwards.
This left a dangerous gap on the left of the Northumber-
land Fusiliers and Royal Scots, and there was another gap
on their right between them and men of the 20th Middle-
sex Regiment, who were holding the outer defence of
Estaires.

In order to fill these gaps and support our thin line,
mixed troops made up of any units that could be gathered
together from the 29th, 25th, and 50th Divisions, among
them Royal Fusiliers and South Wales Borderers, ad-
vanced to reinforce and beat back the enemy opposite Croix
du Bac and a place called the White Dog, or Chien Blanc,
and Les Haies, below Steenwerck, At seven o'clock last

294 THE WAY TO VICTORY

evening the enemy renewed his attacks all along this line,
and after desperate fighting succeeded in forcing our men
back a little north-east of Lestrem and a few hundred
yards back between Steenwerck and Armentieres. But
the gaps were filled up by gallant men, among whom were
a Trench-Mortar Company, who made a fine counter-at-
tack and beat back the enemy at a critical hour. On the
previous day a similar act was done by 350 men of the
Cyclist Corps, who reinforced the centre of the Portu-
guese line and checked the enemy when his drive was a
grave menace.

In the afternoon the battle spread northwards into Flan-
ders, the enemy opening a more intense bombardment and
attacking in heavy forces almost as far as Gheluvelt (east
of Ypres). There was fierce fighting round the White
Chateau at Hollebeke, and the enemy worked from Holle-
beke and up from Warneton and "Plug Street" in his rush
for Wytschaete and the Messines Ridge, which were his
chief objectives. It was then that some of our Scottish
and South African troops made a great charge, hurling the
enemy out of Wytschaete village, while other English bat-
talions stormed the whole crest of the ridge and cleared it
from end to end, though possibly the enemy still remains
in the village of Messines on the other side of the slope.

One thing in this new phase of the war is very cruel, and
makes one's heart ache, however steeled to war's inevitable
brutalities. It is the way in which poor people, non-com-
batants, have been stricken by the enemy's ruthless methods.
It is not to be helped that as the German tide ebbs over
new ground the menace and the horror of this advance
should travel ahead and cause the evacuation of old people,
women, young girls, and children from villages where for
nearly four years of war they have lived within sound of
the guns, but unhurt. It is, however, brutal of the enemy
to fling hundreds of gas shells without warning into a town
like Bethune, crowded, as he knows, with civilians, as last
June he did into Armentieres, and to scatter a harassing

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 295

fire of shrapnel and high-velocity shells into little hamlets
remote from his fighting-lines. From Bethune there are
many women and children in our hospitals suffering from
gas poisoning, and to-day and yesterday I have been into
villages where shells have fallen before the people there
had any chance of escape. Through one village yesterday
passed a man carrying a baby with its arm blown off, and
many old men and women have been wounded. All these
people are very brave, astoundingly gallant. I have only
seen a few women weeping to-day, though there was great
cause for tears.

April 12
The enemy is playing the great game, in which he is fling-
ing all he has into the hazard of war. He has, of course,
a stupendous number of men, and while holding his lines
across the Somme, after his drive down from St.-Ouentin,
and playing a defensive part against the French on our
right, he has moved up to the north, with secrecy and
rapidity, large concentrations of troops and guns for new
and tremendous blows against us. This is continuing his
now determined policy to hurl his strongest weight against
the British armies in an attempt to crush us before either
France or America is able to draw off his divisions by
counter-offensives. So now our troops in the North are
faced by enormous forces. Nearly thirty German divi-
sions are against them from Wytschaete to La Bassee Canal,
and with those troops, innumerable machine-guns, trench-
mortars, and massed batteries of field-guns, very quick to
get forward in support of their infantry.

It is right and just towards our people to say quite simply,
and without rhodomontade or false heroics, that this north-
ern offensive is as menacing as that which began south-
wards on March 21, and that our gallant men among those
little red-brick villages in French Flanders and in the flat
fields between Bailleul and Bethune, are greatly outnum-
bered, and can only hold back the enemy by fighting with

296 THE WAY TO VICTORY

supreme courage. They have done wonderful things, as
I shall tell. Small bodies of them, battalions of divisions
heavily engaged over a wide front, with the enemy trying
to pierce through at many places with sharp spear-heads
of storm troops plentifully armed with machine-guns, have
held on to outposts, sometimes isolated, sometimes thinly
in touch with other bodies of men, and have stayed there
fighting under intense fire, but all the time inflicting bloody
losses on the attacking forces and forbidding them to pass.

So was it when the King's Liverpools, King's Own, and
other Lancashire troops of the 55th Division defended the
village line between Givenchy and Festubert after the Ger-
mans had broken through the Portuguese in the centre.
Their left flank was exposed, but they not only kept their
line intact, but defended each one of its saps and outposts.

It was Liverpool men who held out in the Death or
Glory sap, and in another, further north, where they re-
pulsed all attacks, and, seeing a periscope suddenly appear
out of the earth in front of them, made a rush round it and
killed an Austrian officer observing for Austrian guns.

In reporting this episode they sent the following message :

"Enemy attempted to use binocular periscope opposite
our sap. Party went out and killed an Austrian officer and
two men, and the periscope has been handed over to the
group, to whom it will be very useful."

I saw a number of men to-day belonging to these Liver-
pool battalions, to the Durham Light Infantry, the Royal
Scots, the Royal Scottish Fusiliers, and other units engaged
in these battles, and they described the fighting which hap-
pened after the Germans captured Neuve Chapelle. Parties
of the enemy broke into houses in Laventie and fixed their
machine-guns in the rooms, firing through windows down
the streets and flinging out bombs upon our men, who tried
to rout them out.

One party of the Durhams of the 50th Division was hold-
ing an isolated position on the Lys in front of Estaires, and

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 297

in the dusk a German officer with some men stood up on the
canal bank and shouted to them, "Are you English?"

"We are/' cried a young sentry of the Durhams.

"Are you wounded?" asked the German officer in good
English.

"Not all of us," said the Durham boy.

"Surrender," shouted the German officer, but this time
he was answered with rifle shot.

Forty men came out of houses along the river-side, and
a sergeant of the Durhams thought they were Portuguese,
and said, "Come on down and join them."

He went too far and was taken prisoner, but our men
poured rifle-fire into the Germans, who now came swarm-
ing up.

"We killed a good few of them," said one of the Dur-
hams, "but there were always more to come, and our little
party had to fall back a bit to escape being captured."

One party of Royal Scots, Scottish Fusiliers, and Gor-
dons of the 51st Division sent up with two machine-guns
to strengthen the line in front of Estaires and Laventie
dons of the 51st Division sent up with two machine-guns
in great numbers, and at the same time were bombed by
German aeroplanes, which flew low over their heads with a
great roar of engines and rush of air.

The machine-gunners of the Liverpools are wonderful
fellows, and on the first day by Givenchy, when their guns
were knocked out and buried by shell-fire, they dug them
up again and served them again, and both officers and men
belonging to the machine-gun companies fought with re-
volvers and bombs, while guns were kept going by their
comrades.

A sergeant of the 3rd Division served a field-gun until
the enemy was close on him, and fired 200 rounds between
600 and 200 yards into waves of Germans. The trail of
his gun was broken by shell-burst, and the breech-block was
so injured that between each round he had to prize it open

298 THE WAY TO VICTORY

with a pickaxe. At last, when the enemy was about to
rush him. he destroyed his gun and escaped.

I described yesterday how I saw over 700 prisoners who
had been taken by these Lancashire troops. They were
trapped with great skill by officers and men familiar with
every twist and turn in the ground near Givenchy. When
the enemy broke in, the Liverpools worked round them
and cut them off, not once but several times. In one trip
of this kind they rounded up 300 Germans, and 50 of them
surrendered to one of our brigade majors and his orderly,
the order being given by a German officer who had been
taken first. A certain keep near Festubert was penetrated
by the enemy yesterday with two companies, but the King's
Liverpools made a counter-attack in the evening, and de-
stroyed them almost to a man. A division flank of their
troops was exposed by the German thrust through Neuve
Chapelle, a defensive flank was formed by tunnellers and
small parties of Portuguese under our officers and some
Seaforths, and they have held on since with most resolute
courage.

Other men came up to strengthen the line sent up in old
London omnibuses and lorries. Meanwhile the Scots of
the 51st Division "still sticking it," as the Germans said in
their balloon message on the Somme battlefields, were
fighting again in their same grim old way along the River
Lawe between Locon and Lestrem. They had come up
north after their terrific and exhausting adventures from
Hermies across the old battlefields. There was no rest for
them, and they took up their line and held it against fright-
ful attacks. At dawn yesterday morning the strong post
of Vielle Chapelle held by Gordons was fiercely assaulted,
and they fought on hour after hour, killing the enemy every
time his storm troops made a rush. Scots also defended
the main road between Locon and Lestrem, upon which
the enemy has poured his fire, but where the Highlanders
would not let him pass, and where waves of Germans
have fallen under rifle, machine-gun, and field-gun fire.

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 299

These are acts of heroism which prove once again the
quality of our men, their stubborn courage in defence, their
hatred of giving ground. The enemy has put already well
over ioo divisions into the battle-line since March 21, and
about ninety of these have been against our troops. In this
new battle between Wytschaete and La Bassee Canal nearly
thirty divisions are engaged, and of those six divisions
were in the narrow front north of Lys, driving forward
through Nieppe to Steenwerck. There was another group
of divisions thrusting through south of Armentieres, which
was caught in the pincers, and a new German division was
suddenly flung in south-west and drove through Estaires
towards Merville.

Last night they drove in a wedge between Lestrem and
Merville and gained the position of Calonne-sur-la-Lys,
east of St.-Venant, to which they are trying to force their
way to-day with great intensity of gun-fire and big con-
centration of machine-gunners and riflemen.

A bloody battle is now being fought out on the ground
below the forest of Nieppe. I was all over that ground,
the day before yesterday, when the enemy was nearby at
Lestrem, and it was from villages there among the woods
and between Hazebrouck and St.-Venant that I saw the
evacuation of many families while German shrapnel was
overhead, and the tumult of the guns was louder and
closer. To-day the tide of war has flowed over some of the
places through which they trekked only a day ago, and
many of their houses have already been shattered by Ger-
man gun-fire. The scene to-day along the line of this
hostile invasion was most tragic, because all the cruelty of
war was surrounded by a beauty so intense that the con-
trast was horrible. The sky was of summer blue, with
sunshine glittering on the red-tiled roofs of cottages, and on
their white-washed walls, and on their little window-panes.
All the hedges were clothed with green and flaked by the
snow-white thorn-blossoms. In a night, as it seemed, all the
orchards of France have flowered, and cherry- and apple-

300 THE WAY TO VICTORY

trees are in the full splendour of bloom. The fields are
powdered with close-growing daisies, and the shadows of
the trees are long across the grass as the sun is setting. But
over all this, and in the midst of all this is agony and blood;
on the roads are fugitives, wounded soldiers, dead horses,
guns, and transport. There are fires burning on the hill-
sides. I saw their flames and their great rolling clouds
of smoke rise this morning from places where, the day
before, I had seen French peasants ploughing as though
no war were near, and young girls scattering grain over
fields harrowed by small brothers, and old women bending
to the soil in small farmsteads where all their life wTas
centred, until suddenly a frightful truth touched them, and
they had to leave. Sometimes to-day I wished to God the
sun would not shine like this, nor nature mock at one with
its thrilling beauty of life.

However, our men are full of confidence; if they were
forced back they are glad to know that they made the
enemy pay heavy prices, and that our line is still unbroken.
They are full of faith that against all odds we shall hold
our own in the last battle of all. The pageant of the roads
is the same, the young gunners on their horses and mules
riding by like knights in their steel caps, the infantry
marching with a whistling tune on their lips, the transport
crawling by with dogs in the wagons, and great bunches of
daffodils tied to some of the men's saddles, and old women
and children packed among our men in the dim recesses of
motor-lorries. Officers and men stand about in villages,
under scattered fire, and every man in the Army is doing
whatever task falls to him without an outward sign of
strain, though in the heart of every man is the thought that
these days may decide the fate of the world and all our
life now and to come.

April 14
The Commander-in-Chief's Order of the Day should reveal
to our people and to the world what is happening out here

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 301

in France — the enemy's objects to seize the Channel Ports,
and destroy the British Army, and the frightful forces he
has brought against us to achieve that plan, and the call
that has come to our troops to hold every position to the
last man. "Many amongst us now are tired. . . . With
our backs to the wall each one of us must fight to the end."

Yes, our men are tired — so tired, after a week's fighting
and after these last days and nights, that they can hardly
stagger up to resist another attack, yet they do so because
their spirit wakes again above their bodily fatigue; so tired
that they go on fighting like sleep-walkers, and in any respite
lie in ditches and under hedges and in open fields under
fire in deep slumber until the shouts of their sergeants stir
them again. Some of these men have been fighting since
March 21, with only a few days' rest.

You know what the Scottish battalions of the 51st Divi-
sion have done since that day, fighting all the way back from
the St.-Quentin front before holding back the German
hordes from the way to Bethune.

The 9th Division have done as much and as long, and
after all their desperate fighting down from Gonnelieu and
Gauche Wood to Montauban and Mametz this new battle
burst upon them, and they flung the enemy off the Messines
Ridge and barred his way with their bodies.

English battalions of the 55th, 50th, 34th, and 25th Divi-
sions, through all that first phase in the south, where they
fought scores of rear-guard actions with the enemy on
both flanks, not sleeping for days and nights, have shared
in these northern battles, and have fought, as Sir Douglas
Haig has asked them to fight, with their "backs to the wall."
Often, in outposts and keeps, at bridge-heads and cross-
roads, in bombarded villager and towns, they have fought
back from house and street, in Laventie and Merville and
Estaires, in Steenwerck and Nieppe and Merris and Bailleul
and Bethune. Their losses have not been light in this
heroic fighting. England and Scotland must steel their
hearts to this sacrifice of their sons. The enemy still

302 THE WAY TO VICTORY

storms against them with fresh men, always fresh men,
in overwhelming numbers. Little groups are left out of
gallant companies, but these bands of brothers — Royal
Fusiliers, Worcesters, Sherwoods, "Koylies," Royal Scots
and Scottish Borderers, Liverpools and Yorkshires, and
Durham Light Infantry — have no surrender in their souls,
and if they yield it is to death.

A dreadful scene of war closes on us, and draws nearer
to places not long ago outside its zone — engulfing dear
towns and villages in which our soldiers lived behind the
lines familiar among the people. Merville, with its Flem-
ish gables and old inns and houses and dainty shops, is now
shelled to ruin, and its streets are littered with dead. Into
stately Bailleul, with its bell-shaped tower and its great
market square and solid old houses, built for merchant
princes of the sixteenth century, the enemy is flinging
enormous shells, and yesterday, when I went that way to
villages around all the storm of battle was centred there, and
there was a dreadful sweep of fire bearing down on Merris,
close by, and down the road for miles came the people of
Bailleul, streaming away from that city in which their
homes were being smashed by high explosives.

I have told how yesterday, in the sunlight of a golden
day of spring, with all nature singing over the fields, I saw
the fires of war burning and high columns of smoke. That
night the scene of war became infernal up in Flanders.
It was a clear, starlight night, and for miles the horizon
was lit by the flame of burning farms and stores and am-
munition dumps, and all this pale sky was filled with the
wild glare of fires and by the flash of guns. German air-
raiders came out dropping bombs. The sound of their
engines was a droning song overhead, and our shrapnel
winked and flashed about them. Flights of our aeroplanes
went out over the positions, and night was noisy with their
explosions as they dropped tons of bombs over the Ger-
man troops. To people living in the villages of Flanders,
from which one can see the whole sweep of the battle-line,

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 303

that night was full of terror, and from their windows they
watched the burning of places from which they had es-
caped, and bonfires of their homes, and these refugees with
sleeping children at their breasts wept. Yesterday the
weather changed and there was no sunlight in the sky, but
it was leaden grey with a north-east wind howling, and over
all the fields dense white fog. I went to places where if
there had been any clearness I could have seen every shell
burst and the whole range of battle, but now I could see
nothing of it. It was a drama of noise beating against one's
ears and against one's heart, and a strange terrible thing
to stand there, blind as it were, listening to the infernal
tumult of gun-fire south of Bailleul, with knockings and
sledge-hammer strokes loud and shocking above the inces-
sant drum-fire of field artillery. German shells came
howling over into fields and villages beyond Bailleul, burst-
ing with gruff coughs, and there was an evil snarl of shrap-
nel in the mist.

It was the noise of one of the greatest battles in history,
and I listened to it with faith and hope that the enemy
would be held back this day by our heroic men out there in
those wet fields. Men were coming to their aid. Our
guns were coming up, more gunners and more guns for this
northern battle. They did not waste any time though they
had travelled hard and were dog-weary. They were get-
ting into position — in places where I never expected to see
guns at work — dumping down their shells, making their
wagon-lines, unlimbering. There was no fluster. Officers
and men went about their work quietly with a word or two.
They were white with dust, which filled the lines about their
eyes, but officers gave their commands cheerily, and the men
carried on gamely.

I saw one battery come into action and fire its first shots.
They startled some old women tramping by with bundles on
their backs getting away from these villages, once so snug
under red-tiled roofs, now very sinister, in spite of blos-
soms in their orchards and on their hedges. Their doors

304 THE WAY TO VICTORY

were open, and there was no one at home. Odd shells had
pierced some of their rafters, and groups of our men sat
close under their walls, hunched up with their heads droop-
ing, and in ditches by roadsides, or stood with their backs
to the wall of some old Flemish church, in that way which
always tells one that the place is in shell-range and a likely
target for German guns.

Little bodies of troops marched up towards the battle-
line, led forward by some young officer with grave eyes.
They were streaked with dust and carried heavy packs
with their rifles slung. And all about were men of those
battalions who have been fighting through all this battle,
dirty and tattered, men with the thin gaunt look of soldiers
who have been long under fire in the battle-line, but still
hard, with tightened lips and steel in their eyes. Some of
them slept awhile, stretched out in fields, fathoms deep in
sleep. Some of them drowsed as they marched. In one of
their headquarters where I went a staff officer slept on his
chair in a small farmhouse room, filled with other officers
discussing the plans of battle. In another headquarters,
on the Scherpenberg, near the battle-line, so near that a
shell came through the roof of the hut when they were
taking a meal, a staff officer was so tired after four days
and nights of battle, that he could not remember one day
from another, though when a message came over the wire to
say that the enemy was attacking again, he became alert at
once, and wakefulness came into his eyes as he went out
to give new orders.

I go into these Flemish cottages and barns and our camp
huts, from which these battles are being directed, and where
there is always a chance of intrusion by high explosives,
and find these officers of ours as chatty, smiling, and calm
as they have always been in the gravest hours. Yet it is
courage and not light-heartedness that keeps them like this,
and they stare very frankly at the truth of things and see
it nakedly. The truth of things is without camouflage on
every road and in every field : the tragedy, cruelty, splen-

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 303

dour, and hope of this challenge of fate that has come to
our men.

The worst tragedy, apart from the ordeal of our fighting
men, is the plight of people who lived in places now caught
in the flame of war. Out of Bailleul and Merville and
Estaires; out of scores of hamlets and farmsteads which all
of us out here knew in happier days they are coming far
back in farm-carts and gigs and donkey-carts, on bicycles
and afoot, with wheelbarrows and perambulators, on Brit-
ish gun-wagons and in British lorries. They are enor-
mously brave these old, old women and these young girls
and children. They sit aloft on the big hay-carts piled
high with furniture, while their farm-horses stumble on
down long roads, and old women nod or sleep like babies
on coloured mattresses, and girls call out "Good luck!" to
our soldiers. They drive their cattle before them, and
yesterday I saw great herds of cows coming back from
the country round Bailleul. Small boys with young mothers
tramp sturdily on with one hand clasping their mother's
skirt and gripping a bundle of clothes, young heroes of
France with the courage of their race. To the last mo-
ment some of these people stay in their villages under fire,
standing about among our steel-hatted men with no cover-
ing to their braided hair, until at last they know they must
go or die. So now they are moving away from the battle
zone, cared for as far as possible by the French and British
authorities.

These men of ours have exceeded all their previous
records of valour, though God knows they have filled three
years and more with acts of courage. I should want
hundreds of columns of this paper to tell in full all they
have done during these last days. I can only tell a few
things baldly, like a catalogue of dull facts, though in them
is the soul of our race and the great supreme sacrifice of
the human heart. When the centre was broken at Laventie
by a colossal thrust against the Portuguese, the North-
umberland Fusiliers of the 50th Division, East Yorks, and

306 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Durham Light Infantry were sent up to hold the line of
the Lys and to defend Estaires. It was too late to form a
strong defensive line, but these men fought against attack
after attack by unceasing waves of storm troops.

The Durham Light Infantry of the 50th Division held
crossings of the Lys Canal up to Sailly, on a front of 10,500
yards, until the enemy struck into Bac St.-Maur. There
was a race for the river, and the Durhams got there first,
facing the enemy on the other side, and raking them with
rifle-fire. A party of Durhams held the salient over the
river at Lestrem for a long time, till it was pounded to
mush by German trench-mortars. The bank of the Lys
could only be weakly held, and there were terrible fights
about the bridgeheads, but the enemy crossed between
them. On the morning of April 10 Estaires was filled
with shell-fire, and the enemy rushed the swing-bridge and
swarmed into the western part of the town, but the Dur-
hams and Northumberland Fusiliers charged down the
streets and cleared them of the enemy, making a No Man's
Land fifty yards beyond the bridgehead, which they cov-
ered with their machine-guns. Their line was turned by
the enemy breaking through higher up, close to Armen-
tieres, and they had to withdraw.

A message reached a party of East Yorks saying "the
enemy is behind us, we are going to fall back." But they
refused to retire even then, and fought on until they were
surrounded and overpowered.

The Durhams and their comrades dug a line in front of
Merville, and withdrew there under heavy fire, firing their
own rifles as they went back step by step, with their faces
to the enemy. One machine-gunner of ours kept his
weapon in action until all his comrades had got away, and
the Germans were within seventy yards of him. Then he
broke his gun and escaped. These men of ours in this
position had against them two and a half German divisions.

Near Lestrem some of the Durhams had trouble in blow-
ing up a bridge owing to the enemy's fire, and men of the

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 307

trench-mortar section counter-attacked in order to gain
time while two companies of the Durhams stayed on the
other side of the river for this purpose. When the bridge
was blown up the survivors on the other side swam across,
with machine-gun bullets whipping the water about them,
and rejoined their comrades.

When the enemy attacked Merville in great strength it
was necessary again to blow up bridges, and on one of them
ten Germans went up in the explosion after a small party
of them had crossed, and died fighting with the engineers
in charge of this work. One bridge was left undestroyed,
and was seen by a brigade major, a man with cool cour-
age. He searched about for dynamite in a store he hap-
pened to know, and put it in position. But he was attacked
by German bombers, and had to go more quickly than he is
accustomed to move, being a man of unflurried manner.

There was fierce street fighting in Merville during the
darkness, and the Durhams and other men fell back fighting.
Yesterday the enemy attacked again from Merville, and
they were shot down like rabbits by a fierce rifle-fire, which
even overmastered their machine-guns. Here yesterday
the enemy was slaughtered and all his attacks were re-
pulsed with bloody losses.

In all the fighting round the Lys the 40th Division had a
hard tragic time, and the men were called upon for the
greatest valour, which they gave to the death. Among
those battalions were the SufTolks, Yorks, Welsh Regiment,
Royal Scots Fusiliers, Middlesex, and Highland Light In-
fantry. They held Fleurbaix and Bois Grenier on the left
of the Portuguese, and when the Germans broke through
our Allies the division found its right flank turned. The
120th Brigade of this division formed a defensive flank
and held the bridgeheads to cover the retreat of the 49th
Brigade to the south of Bac St.-Maur, fighting rear-guard
actions against swarms of the enemy. Parties of the 12th
SufTolks, surrounded on three sides, held out at Contees
Farm till evening, and then fell back to the north bank of

308 THE WAY TO VICTORY

the Lys. The 13th Yorks on the left held a defensive flank
along "Shaftesbury Avenue" to Bois Grenier till eleven
o'clock that night. For the next two days there was ter-
rible fighting, and only 1200 men remained out of two
brigades. The 34th Division was unable to keep in touch
with them, and after holding the Steenwerck switch line
the remnants of the 40th Division brigades fell back to
Le Mortier. The troops were exhausted, but even then the
Highland Light Infantry, Royal Scottish Fusiliers, and
Middlesex Regiment counter-attacked and drove back the
enemy 630 yards, capturing machine-guns and prisoners.
Under increasing pressure they were forced to cross the
Lys, blowing up the bridges in the very nick of time to
prevent the enemy cutting them off, and so late that several
officers had to swim across to escape. The 12th Suffolks
and 13th Yorks were still holding stubbornly on the left,
and the Division fought until almost the last gasp, when
on April 13 the survivors were relieved by the Australians.

Meanwhile during this fighting in the Merville sector
there were great battles further north, from Wytschaete
Ridge down to Neuve Eglise and Merris, near Bailleul,
which are still going on.

I have already described how the 9th Division of Scots
swept the enemy back from Messines Ridge. I saw some
of their officers yesterday while the fighting was still in
progress, and they say that the charge of the South Africans
was one of the finest things ever done, because they were
still unrested from the Battle of the Somme. But they
attacked with tremendous spirit and flung the enemy back.
Unfortunately more masses came against them afterwards,
and though we still hold Wytschaete village we now swing
back from Messines and the southern end of the ridge.

They were Cheshires of the 25th Division who resisted
the weight of the German attacks at Neuve Eglise when the
enemy brought up several new divisions against these men,
who fought against fearful odds, and afterwards Worces-
ter and Sherwoods and others made a wonderful counter-

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 309

attack which drove the enemy out of that place, which was a
great menace to all our positions.

Thirteen to fourteen divisions were put in by the enemy
between Wytschaete and Bailleul, and for some time it was
the supreme courage of English county regiments that kept
back these hordes, fighting day after day. Sappers put up
great fights in holding gaps in the line through which the
enemy came with his machine-guns, trying to widen them
for the infantry to follow, as is his method. Several
times the South Wales Borderers and their comrades had
their flanks exposed by Neuf Berquin and elsewhere, and
had to form defensive flanks with small parties, who fought
to a finish.

Yesterday the enemy, in intense fighting, made his way
into Merris Church, below Bailleul, but was driven back
with most severe losses. It was a day of fierce battling
on this part of the front and southwards beyond Merville,
but along the whole front the enemy was checked.

II

The Flanders Front

April 15
During the past three days the enemy's main effort in
Flanders has been to capture Bailleul and its railways, and
Old Kemmel Hill, from which one can look over to
Wytschaete Ridge. For this purpose the enemy has thrown
in all the weight he could gather for these attacks north of
Merville, hurrying up fresh divisions all through the fight-
ing to replace shattered and exhausted troops, and con-
centrating a large amount of heavy and field artillery.

Up to last night our troops in this area between Merris
and Wytschaete had engaged some fifteen divisions, only
one of which had been previously in action in the Somme
battlefields, with battalions of special storm troops, and

310

THE WAY TO VICTORY

part of an Alpine corps who had orders to take Bailleul at
all costs. They have not taken Bailleul nor the railway
south of it, and our outnumbered men, some of whom had
been fighting for many days and nights without sleep, and

THE THREAT TO THE COAST, APRIL 1918

always under fire, have repulsed the enemy again and
again, and inflicted frightful losses on him.

The enemy's objective was Kemmel on the first day of
this fighting, that is April 10, and his officers are amazed
at the resistance made by British soldiers so weak in num-
bers against their tremendous forces. Their dead lie piled
up below the railway embankment near Bailleul, living
waves of Germans being mown down by our machine-

THE NORTHERN ATTACK Sll

gunners, who had great targets for their shooting, and al-
though once yesterday our flank was momentarily threat-
ened south of this city, now filled with the fire of monstrous
shells, the line was fully re-established last night by counter-
attacks, and thirty Germans were made prisoners, with
machine-guns.

In order to surround Bailleul two heavy attacks were
made on the west towards Meteren, and on the east at
Neuve Eglise. Near Meteren the enemy failed utterly, and
suffered immense losses. There has been fierce fighting
round a place called the Steam Mill, near Meteren, the
enemy having been ordered to capture the Meteren
road and the high ground beyond, at whatever sacri-
fice. They made the sacrifice, but did not get the ground.
Last night our troops, who had held Neuve Eglise through
three days and nights of intense strife, withdrew, unknown
to the enemy, to a line a slight way back from the village
in order to avoid staying a target for unceasing shell-fire.

It is now enemy soldiers who this morning are in the
ruins, under great bombardment. This battle at Neuve
Eglise has been filled with grim episodes, for the village
has changed hands several times, and each side has fought
most fiercely and with any kind of weapon, small bodies of
men attacking and counter-attacking among broken walls
and bits of houses, and under the stump of the church
tower, at dawn and in darkness, with rifles and bayonets
and bombs. The attack on this place was really begun
further back, when the enemy struck up through Plug
Street on April 10, and drove forward every day since
towards this goal of Neuve Eglise.

All the time he was faced and resisted by the troops
from Wiltshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, and Lancashire,
while other Lancashire troops, along with the Northumber-
land and Worcestershire men and others, were holding up
the line of the Lys and fighting rear-guard actions round
Croix-du-Bac, as I have told before.

A body of Wiltshire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire men of

312 THE WAY TO VICTORY

the 25th Division held the east of Plug Street Wood when
the attack burst upon them, and kept their lines intact
for two days and nights, though the enemy had pierced
behind them, and west of the wood against other troops
fighting back under overwhelming pressure towards Neuve
Eglise. The situation became serious when the enemy
broke into Plug Street village, and made a nest of machine-
guns there which could not be routed out by fierce Lan-
cashire counter-attacks. Our units in this fighting belonged
mainly to the 17th, 34th, 31st, and 25th Divisions, with the
5th and 33rd Divisions, who came up to their relief.

Some of our own machine-gunners on the west of the
wood acted as infantry and charged the enemy outposts,
and when the Germans thrust forward again to the hamlet
called Romorin and a huddle of houses called Les-Trois-
Pipes, pioneers of South Wales Borderers not trained for
fighting attacked them most gallantly. But the enemy
poured up to this place, and there was severe fighting there
for hours.

Meanwhile, on the night of the nth, men of the 25th
Division holding Plug Street Wood were ordered to
abandon this dangerous position, in which they were nearly
surrounded, and fall back to a line in front of Neuve
Eglise and La Nieppe. They did this in face of the enemy,
and the last men in the wood were two subalterns who were
entirely surrounded by Germans. They gathered some
bombs and made their way down an old trench in the dark-
ness— there was a glare of fire through Plug Street Wood,
where in the old days I used to visit friends on summer
days when snipers' bullets came whisking off the leaves —
and by the light of this they made their way at last through
the enemy lines and so escaped. Some other officers were
not so lucky. On the way back to the line outside Neuve
Eglise a colonel with a machine-gun section led his men
against a body of the enemy in possession of a ruin called
La Grande Munque, and killed a number of them, before

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 313

getting back wounded with the little party of his surviving
men.

Later the enemy broke in the neighbourhood of an old
estaminet called Kort Pyp (the "Short Pipe"), and round
here a body of King's Royal Rifles of the 25th Division
fought almost to the last man in a desperate action. An-
other party of the same regiment suffered heavily in an
heroic action to check the enemy south of Neuve Eglise,
towards which they were pressing now in great strength.
On the night before last our line fell back from near La
Creche and swung round in a loop south of Neuve Eglise
towards Ravelsberg Farm. It was then that Neuve Eglise
itself became a place of hellish battle.

The enemy broke through into its ruined streets, and
small parties of the Wiltshires, Worcesters, "Koylies," and
others sprang on them or were killed, and fought des-
perately in backyards and over broken walls and in shell-
pierced houses wherever they could find Germans or hear
the tattoo of machine-guns. Several times the enemy was
cleared out of most of the town, and our men held the
hollow square containing most of the streets and defended
it as a kind of fortress, though with dwindling numbers
under a heavy fire of shells and trench-mortars and
machine-guns. The enemy was savage in his attacks against
these men, and from behind the German commanding of-
ficers sent up fresh troops with stern orders to have done
with the business and destroy our men, whom they vastly
outnumbered. But they could not take Neuve Eglise by
direct assault, and last night our troops, Wiltshires and
Cheshires, of the 25th, made a counter-attack at Crucifix
Corner, won ground, and brought back five machine-guns,
and left there many German dead. It was an astounding
feat of grim courage.

But Neuve Eglise was given up by us for the reasons I
have stated. The enemy, unable to get it by infantry
assault, shelled it fiercely by the fire of many guns and made
it a death-trap, as now it is for them. Without yielding

314 THE WAY TO VICTORY

to a direct assault, our men obeyed orders and stumbled out
of the cursed place, silently and unknown to their enemy,
and took up a line further back.

Southwards the situation is much the same as when I
last wrote. The enemy has not made any progress of im-
portance beyond Merville and along the Lys Canal above
St. Venant, where our men have been holding the line
against repeated attacks. On Sunday they attacked four
times, but each time were swept by our machine-gun fire.
For a while they got into the hamlet called Cornet-Malo,
and fixed machine-guns in its cottages, but Argylls and
Royal Scots of the 6ist Division drove them out by rifle-
fire and bombing. They came on again last night and made
another breach in the village, but were again routed out,
while another struggle went on about some brickfields
nearby against our Warwicks of the 6ist Division.

For the moment, therefore, the enemy is checked in his
ambitious plans, and the heroism of our soldiers has foiled
his main efforts, broken, for the time being at least, his
drive towards the coast, and shattered many of his proud
divisions, many times more in number than our forces in
this northern battle zone. Fortunately many of our most
tired men have been relieved. Fresher troops of the 19th,
49th, 59th, and 33rd are facing the enemy, and the front
line is now strongly supported. So one may breathe with
relief after the anxiety of three days ago, when things were
at their worst.

From prisoners and other sources the proud plans, enor-
mous hopes, and detailed preparations for this mighty
assault on us with the vast strength of the German army are
becoming known to us. Before the Battle of Armentieres
the greatest secrecy was kept. No letters were allowed to
be sent and no leave given to any German officer or man.
No information of any kind was given to officers until they
reached the line a few hours before the battle began, after
forced marches from the detraining point.

The order then came: "The Sixth German army on

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 315

April 9 is breaking through the English position and will
advance on Hazebrouck."

It was stated that the second battalion of the 156th In-
fantry Regiment would follow the 32nd Division, and
march on Fleurbaix. Later an order came, saying the divi-
sion was held up at Fleurbaix, and the 156th Infantry
Regiment would swing to the left and go to Bac-St.-Maur.

It was when they were crossing the Lys that their
casualties were heaviest, and the infantry were cut up by
our artillery fire. The enemy brought up large numbers
of field-guns, many of which were not allowed to register
before the battle. Many shells fell short and killed Ger-
man infantrymen. They were especially strong in trench-
mortars, brought up in baskets, and it is said that only one
mortar in each group was allowed to register before action.
Their greatest trouble was in getting transport forward
over the sticky mud in the old No Man's Land, and no doubt
thousands of men are now working furiously to make roads
and lay tramlines.

The German officers seem to have been inspired with
fanatical faith in victory, with which they tried to animate
their men. Major-General Hofer, commanding a brigade
of the Ersatz Reserve, who is a one-armed man, led over
the first wave, brandishing his stick before the astonished
soldiers, who had never seen one of their high officers going
over the top. On the night before the attack their losses
were heavy under the concentrated fire of our guns on their
assembly places, and the first waves had to climb over
wreckage and dead bodies on their way of advance. Their
first exaltation must have flickered out, I think, for since
the beginning of the attack the German losses have been
ghastly, and their gains have not been as great as their
hopes.

April 16
It seemed inevitable, after our loss of Neuve Eglise, that
the enemy should make a quick and strong effort to capture

316 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Bailleul, and this he did last night by putting into the battle
three divisions of fresh assaulting troops not previously
used in this fighting, and encircling that city by fierce at-
tacks on the ground south-east and east, including the ridge
of Le Ravelsberg and Mont de Lille.

His troops, as I mentioned in my message yesterday de-
scribing the first attacks on Bailleul, including his Alpine
corps of Jaegers and possibly a Bavarian division, and the
117th Division. Among our men defending the city against
these heavy forces were Staffords and Notts and Derbies.
Yesterday when I was in the country round Bailleul the
enemy's guns were working up for this new attack, and there
was a continual bombardment spreading up to Wytschaete
Ridge. Heavy shells were being flung into Bailleul itself,
and the smoke of fires was rising like mist from the small
towns and villages like Meteren and Morbecque down to
Merville.

Our guns were also pounding the enemy's positions, and
through that bombardment concentrations of German in-
fantry, guns, transport and cavalry were moving up the
roads in and north of Merville. Intense shell-fire was
ranged upon them, while our air squadrons went out in the
evening and at night and dropped large quantities of high
explosives upon this traffic of men and beasts, so that they
must have suffered many casualties.

In their attacks round Ravelsberg Spur, where all
through the old Flanders fighting we had camps and hut-
ments known by heart among our English and New Zea-
land troops, and divisional headquarters during active
operations, the enemy must have lost heavily again. For
our men were stubborn in defence, and their machine-gun
fire must have been of a deadly nature owing to their posi-
tions along railway and on ridge. But the enemy advanced
upon them in waves striking up on both sides of Bailleul,
so that after strong resistance our line was withdrawn be-
yond the town. For tactical reasons, apart from the im-
portance of the railway line, it is better for our troops to

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 317

be out of Bailleul, for it threatened to become like Ypres
in the old bad days, when all our traffic and transport had
to pass between buildings falling beneath atrocious shell-
fire, through squares which were targets for German guns,
and out by cross-roads which were death-traps. Neverthe-
less it is with deep regret that one thinks of poor old Bailleul
in German hands after all these years of association with
our armies. There is not a man with any long service
out here who has not passed through Bailleul scores of
times on the way to Armentieres or Kemmel, looking up at
its old bell-shape tower in the great square surrounded by
sixteenth-century houses with Flemish roofs and high dor-
mer windows and Renaissance fronts. It was a grim old
town, with high walls between narrow streets and grey
brick-work, which looked cold in this northern weather, but
there were friendly people there, who knew and welcomed
our men, and many houses were sanctuaries in which fight-
ing men could forget war and enjoy for a little while the
warmth and kindliness of life, with some musician among
them sitting at the piano in a cosy room among a French
family with whom they were billeted. Thousands of our
officers who went forward to the lines about Plug Street,
or Wytschaete, used to take dinner at the Hotel du Faucon ;
an old place, not very comfortable or grand within, but
where there was good food and good wine and good com-
radeship. There was an officers' club round the corner of
the Grande Place, served by comely Flemish lasses; and
here in winter one saw groups of muddy fellows straight
out of the bogs of Flemish battlefields, but merry and
bright after a wash and brush up, and over the tables one
heard them telling strange tales of war with a gust of
laughter or remembrance of some moment of great peril
in their eyes, or a passing salute of the spirit to some "pal"
who had just "gone west"— strange, thrilling, tragic-comic
tales of the way men lived in those old days of trench war-
fare which some of us thought would last until the end.
And in old Bailleul there were little tea-shops, where we

318 THE WAY TO VICTORY

could pass a pleasant hour on the way elsewhere, sitting in
the courtyards in summer, where flowering plants grew up
walls, and pleasant women waited among customers who
became their friends. I remember on one day in one such
place a group of officers gathered round a little girl, who was
an invalid and could not walk, and whose delight it was to
play tunes on the gramophone to these tall soldiers with
mud on them, who were very gentle and chivalrous to this
child with her big blue eyes and waxen face. Always in
the Grande Place of Bailleul there were crowds of men.
For three years and more I saw them there in all weathers,
with snow on their steel hats or the glare of the sun,
and on the days of battle up in Flanders there was a turbu-
lent pageant passing through the square, a pageant of guns
and wagons and mules and men, with pipes for Scottish
troops and brass bands for English troops. The King
came here one day, and all the square was lined by fight-
ing men of the Naval Division, and New Zealanders, and
Australians, and Scots, and on the steps of the town hall
were groups of Army nurses. Just outside the city, by the
asylum for poor old women, who had wit enough for ter-
ror when shells fell near and the sky of night was aflame
with the lights of war, we had an aerodrome belonging to
the Royal Naval Air Service, where, in hangers and
pavilions were as jolly a set of boys as heart of man could
hope to meet about the world. I went among them many
times and listened to their queer jargon of "air speech,"
which is a different language to us "earth men," and won-
dered at the amazing courage of these children, who were
the great knights-errant of the sky and great captains. The
enemy used to hate their home here and came over in the
darkness and at dawn to drop bombs on their sheds, and
they told me how this sort of thing was devilish awkward
when they were shaving or in their tubs. They always
paid him back for such behaviour with terrible vengeance.
Crowds of memories come back to me about Bailleul, and
it is sad now that this dear old city is no more than a mem-

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 319

ory to us, who knew its streets so well and its friendly
people, whom a day or two ago I saw trekking away down
the long roads of exile while their homes were burning be-
hind them.

The capture of this city belongs to the third great at-
tack which has been delivered against us by the enemy
since March 21. Always he has massed his strength op-
posite our lines and struck with full weight against our
troops. In the first phase, down from St.-Quentin and
Cambrai salient, the French came to our help and relieved
us by their good and gallant aid. But the Germans then
edged away from the French to strike us again, this time
at Arras, where they failed. Then the third time has now
followed in this northern blow; and once again our men
have had to sustain the abominable pressure of German di-
visions, constantly relieved and supported by fresh divisions
passing through them, while our troops fight on and on,
killing the enemy in large numbers, but having to withdraw
to new lines of defence under these enormous odds. Their
heroism and their sacrifice are beyond words that may be
uttered, except in the silence of one's heart.

This morning the enemy developed his gain of Bailleul
by pressing westward of the city, and at the same time de-
livered separate and fierce attacks against Wytschaete vil-
lage, which he appears to have captured after desperate
fighting, as well as Spanbroekmolen. It is probable that the
next German battle will be directed against the hills of
Kemmel, Mont Noir, and Mont Rouge, which run east and
west above Bailleul.

Ill

The Panorama of Battle

April 16
The battle from Wytschaete to Meteren and the line west
of Merville still goes on furiously, and the enemy is spend-

320 THE WAY TO VICTORY

ing his strength of divisions recently thrown into this
fighting by repeated attacks, which during the past twenty-
four hours have resulted in very great German losses.
Yesterday morning the fortune of war seemed again in
favour of the enemy by his capture of Wytschaete ridge
down to Spanbroekmolen, and by his entry of Meteren,
west of Bailleul. Our hard-pressed troops were forced to
give ground at both those places after a resistance which
cost the enemy many lives, but in the evening counter-at-
tacks hurled the enemy back from Wytschaete village —
that pile of brickdust above stumps of dead trees which
were Wytschaete Wood, and in a separate battle west of
Bailleul regained at least for a time part of Meteren.

This morning renewed counter-attacks gave us back all
Meteren, and the enemy garrison there was destroyed.
(Sir Douglas Haig last night reported that the enemy had
reoccupied Meteren and Wytschaete.) I watched the bat-
tle last night and again this morning from the centre of
an arc of fire which is like a loop flung round Wytschaete
to Bailleul, and in a sharp curve round to Merris and the
country about Merville, so that great gun-fire and the whole
sweep of battle were close about one on three sides.

It was an astounding panorama of open warfare such
as I never dreamed of seeing on this Western Front, where
for so long both sides were hemmed in by trenches. Every
slope and village and windmill and town and road in this
new line of battle has been familiar to me for more than
three years, and now I could tell by a glance what places
were being destroyed by the enemy's guns, and saw his
barrage-fire was flung round certain hillsides, and what
roads — those dusty, winding roads down which I have mo-
tored hundreds of times — were smoking from his trail of
high explosives. Bailleul was still blazing. In the early
evening, after a wet, misty day which filled all this battle-
field with whitish fog, one could only see that city under a
cloud, but as the sky darkened and the wind blew some of
the mist away enormous flames burned redly in the poor

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 321

dead heart of Bailleul, and in their glare there were dark
masses of walls and broken roofs outlined jaggedly by fire.
To the left the village of Locre was aflame under a storm
of high explosives, and the enemy's guns were putting
heavy shells down the roads which lead out of that place.
There were fires of burning farms and hamlets as far south-
wards as Merville, behind one, as one stood looking out to
Bailleul, and lesser fires of single cottages and haystacks,
and the wind drifted all the smoke of them across the sky
in long white ribbons.

It was just before dusk that counter-attacks began north-
wards from Wytschaete southwards for Meteren, and al-
though before then there had been steady slogging of guns
and howling of shells, at that time this volume of dreadful
noise increased tremendously, and drumfire broke out in
fury, so that the sky and earth trembled with it. It was
like the beating of all the drums of the world in a muf-
fled tattoo, above which and through which there were
enormous clangouring hammer-strokes from British and
German heavies. It was a wet, wild evening, with few
pale gleams of sun through storm clouds and smoke of
guns, and for miles all this panorama of battle was boil-
ing and seething with bursting shells and curling wreaths
of smoke from batteries in action. I was in the midst of
wide concentric rings of field-guns and heavy-guns firing
rapidly. When darkness came each battery was revealed
by its flashes, and all fields around me were filled with red
winkings and sharp stabs of flame. Almost till darkness
came birds of ours were on the wing — birds with brave
hearts in them, flying over these frightful fields. Our air-
men were flying low and searching through the mists for
movements of enemy troops in order to call to the guns to
shell and scatter them. Lights went up from Meteren about
7.30, and it was then that our men sent up these rockets to
tell their whereabouts. Through the dusk and darkness
there were many men moving. Groups of mud-coloured
men who had been sleeping under hedges sprang up to

322 THE WAY TO VICTORY

shouts of sergeants, formed up in platoons, and marched
towards the fires. One party, as they went, broke into
song "Good-byee, good-byee," and jogged down the wind-
ing lane close to the wheels of the gun-limbers where one
could see the drivers' faces by the glow of cigarette-ends.
It was not a healthy spot. Shells had come over hedges
white with thorn-blossom, and into little orchards beyond,
where cherry-blossom is thick as the fall of snow on their
branches, and there were dead horses about and other
things. But these boys shouted out their song, and nearby
other men sat under the banks of ditches smoking and
chatting. Above the tumult of gun-fire a bugle rang out,
played by a lad who stepped out into the lane. They were
the good old notes of "Come to the cookhouse," and a
fine subtle odour of soup from the field-kitchens told the
meaning of his music.

During the night the enemy brought up more guns and
lengthened his range, and flung over 8-inch stuff" and other
abominable things with a wide-scattered fire over all these
fields and villages, so that one could be blown to bits in
fields of springing crops or in the back garden of any cot-
tage here or on three sides of any old millhouse. It was
just a question of luck, but among soldiers who have to pass
through the places because it is their unpleasant job there
were old women and girls and farm boys and babies. They
had stayed there too long with that queer fatalistic belief
that if the enemy is shelling the next village but one they
are safe. But the enemy had brought forward his guns
and had lengthened his range, and now this morning these
poor people were in the zone of fire in the actual battle-
fields. Even then some of them dallied to pack their bun-
dles, anxious, but not panic-stricken, and old ladies in black
dresses tramped down lanes and roads under the scattered
fire of shells that came roaring like devils and burst with
damnable explosions, as though it were nothing but a thun-
derstorm from which they were hurrying for shelter.

One old woman told me in queer Flemish patois that she

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 323

wanted to go home, and pointed to her farmstead, which
was being knocked to pieces by 5.9's. A lanky boy, leaning
up against a mill-house watching the battle, explained her
case to me in good English.

"Old woman is daft," he said. "She wants to get her
cow in that old house down there. A man was killed there
five minutes ago, so a Tommy told me."

He turned to the old wrinkled dame, and said in Flem-
ish, which was so like English I could make out his words,
"You come again this afternoon, mother." It seemed to
me that the afternoon would be no better than the morning
round about that red-roofed cottage which had lost half its
walls. It is a strange phase of the war.

An officer of the Scottish Rifles whom I met up there
this morning said that at Meteren, from which he had just
come back after hard fighting, he lived in a deserted farm-
house, where people had left their chickens and cows, say-
ing they could do what they liked with them. So the
Scottish Rifles had baked chicken for supper, and milked
the cows for breakfast, and escaped the Germans' shell-
fire in that rural spot, and shot down Germans at easy rifle
range.

I heard to-day of how some of the Worcesters of the
33rd Division were put out to prevent the enemy from mov-
ing north and working between Bailleul and Strazeele, after
the Germans' attack, and how the general of the division
gathered together every kind of men he could find to fill the
breach. They were a miscellaneous lot of fellows, includ-
ing cyclists, dismounted Tank crews, and orderlies, and this
little crowd made a glorious stand and kept the enemy back
by rifle and Lewis-gun fire.

In this gallant 33rd Division and in its 100th Brigade
there were Worcesters, Glasgow Highlanders, and King's
Royal Rifles, the "Church Lads' Brigade," as they are
called, amongst those who made the stubborn and terrific
defence of Neuve Eglise. They fought incessantly for
four days against attack after attack, until they were sur-

SU THE WAY TO VICTORY

rounded on both flanks. The colonel of the Worcesters
stayed in the village till the last. Dead Germans now lie
piled around its walls as proof of this long defence. An-
other body of troops in this neighbourhood who fought to
the death were some Highland Light Infantry, whom I first
met in the days of the old Somme battles, when they showed
great gallantry in many fights. Now some of them have
fought their last fight, and died rather than surrender to
the enemy all round them.

Between Neuve Eglise and Meteren other troops fought
during this last week with unyielding spirit against dread-
ful odds, and only gave ground when they were exposed
on their flanks and presented such a thin line of khaki that
the enemy had only to fall against them with his weight of
fresh divisions and he was bound to break through. So
with dwindling numbers the Queens fought for three days,
turned on one flank and then on the other, but still main-
taining their rear-guard actions and making the enemy pay
a high price in life and blood for every bit of ground.

Cyclists of the 33rd Division acted as cavalry, going out
on patrols to find the enemy's whereabouts, and firing at
his outposts. Round by Meteren the Scottish Rifles went
out on stalking expeditions, between heavy attacks which
they beat off, and lay in ambush for German machine-gun-
ners, who came creeping up under hedges, and destroyed
them by rifle-fire. When brigade headquarters was at-
tacked and taken by Germans, some Royal Engineers, with
infantry, made a counter-attack and gained back this place,
destroyed many of the enemy, and brought back forty of
them.

I saw some of the prisoners this morning marching
across the battlefield and looking about them insolently with
an air of pride as though they belonged to the winning side.
Yet others are now saying quite frankly that the German
High Command has failed in its big plans.

Bethune was on their time-table for April 10, and it is

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 325

not theirs now. Bailleul was to have been taken in the first
attack. Arras was counted as theirs on March 28.

There were Middlesex men among the defenders of
Meteren, and this morning they made a fine counter-at-
tack, which helped to shatter the German garrison there.
During all this fighting our machine-gunners have had
many human targets, and have fired so steadily into the
waves of Germans that outside Meteren they wore out
forty barrels. All this countryside is littered with German
dead. One German regiment further south had five bat-
talion commanders killed in three days, and everywhere
their losses in officers have been high.

It is with natural regret that one hears of our with-
drawal from the heights east of Ypres in order to straighten
the line and economize men. This is military wisdom and
beyond any kind of criticism, as it seems to me, but the
grief lies in the loss of ground captured by so much heroic
fighting round the old Ypres salient and at such a sacrifice
of brave lives. There is one other regret to-day, though
only sentimental. Albert Church tower — the Tower of the
Golden Virgin, who bent head downwards over that ruined
city with her babe outstretched — has fallen under gun-fire.
It was a great landmark bound up with all our memories,
but, alas! the old prophecy that the war would end when
the Madonna fell has not been fulfilled, though it was our
gunners who did their best to hurry up that time of peace.

April 17
There are several actions in progress to-day, practically
all the way from the Flanders Front down from
Wytschaete to the country in front of the forest of Nieppe
and as far south as Givenchy. The enemy is making des-
perate efforts with strong forces to capture Kemmel Hill,
which his troops have been ordered to take at whatever sac-
rifice, and with this object he is trying to break away be-
yond Meteren, west of Bailleul, as well as striking down
from the ridges north of it.

326 THE WAY TO VICTORY

These attacks against our northern front were preceded
yesterday by a strong offensive against the Belgians be-
tween Kippe and Langemarck on a front of six kilometres
(four miles), but after gaining entry into the front-line
trenches the Germans were counter-attacked in the most gal-
lant way by the Belgians, who made 600 prisoners, from
regiments representing at least four German divisions,
among whom were many officers. During our withdrawal
from the height of Passchendaele, the enemy troops hesi-
tated very much in following up, and it was many hours
before their forward patrols drew anywhere near. Mean-
while our guns were waiting for them, and swept this
ground with fire, killing their outposts and breaking up their
assemblies in Polygon Wood and other places on the old
Flanders battlefields of last year's fighting. All that
ground is still as horrible as when I described it in the early
autumn of last year, with its innumerable shell-craters,
filled to the brim with water and liquid bogs, among its
dead trees and wreckage of battle. So it is not good for
advancing troops, and the enemy is wretched there. Pris-
oners taken here and further south are disconsolate, and
show no enthusiasm for a continuance of this offensive.
They have been told by their officers that they are going
to break through to Calais and the Channel Ports, but they
do not believe they will ever get there, and admit that their
losses have been ghastly.

Meanwhile an army of a different colour is being re-
vealed to them alongside ours, and they know that on this
road to Calais they must not only break through British di-
visions, against whom they have been fighting themselves
out, but also through French troops, who are now coming
to our aid after our men have been sustaining such terrible
onslaughts for nearly two weeks from masses of German
divisions, passing through each other in endless sequence in
order to destroy our armies before we could get relief. The
arrival of French troops on our northern front is the most
important act that has happened during the past three or

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 327

four days, and it was with deep satisfaction that we met
these troops on the roads, and knew that at last our poor,
tired men would get support and help against their over-
whelming odds. Beside our khaki army has grown very
quickly an army in blue, the cornflower blue of the French
poilus. They are splendid men, hard and solid fellows who
have been war-worn and weather-worn during these three
and a half years past, and look great fighting men who have
gone many times into battle, and know all that war can
teach them in endurance and cunning and quick attack. As
they came marching up the roads to the Front they were like
a streaming river of blue — blue helmets and blue coats, and
blue carts, and blue lorries, all blending into one tone
through these April mists as they went winding over the
countryside and through the French market towns, where
their own people waved to them, and then through villages
on the edge of the Flanders battlefields, where they waited
to go into action under the shell-broken wall or under the
hedges, above which our shell-fire travelled, or in the fields
where they made their bivouacs, and fragrant steams arose
to one's nostrils as the cuts tots lifted the lid of stew-pans,
and hungry men gathered around after the long march. I
saw some of these French soldiers under fire yesterday,
harassing fire which the enemy was flinging about the roads
and fields, and they were very careless of its menace, and
went about their jobs calmly, with many jokes among them-
selves, like men who are accustomed to this sort of thing
and make no account of it. Some of their officers were
strolling about on a plot of ground which the enemy was
ploughing with odd shells, big and beastly things which
came with a shrill sing-song and burst enormously, and
these French officers, very chic, very courteous to the Eng-
lish about them, smoked cigarettes and chatted together as
they watched the battle not far away and the flames of
Bailleul and the wicked line of fire from German barrages
down Flemish roads, and their nerves seemed unshaken by
the noise and they were unexcited. Yesterday morning

328 THE WAY TO VICTORY

some of their men attacked on the flank of ours and drove
the enemy out of a village for a time, and helped to
strengthen our lines of defence for the battle which is now
going on. It gives one a greater sense of security to know
that these French forces are with us in the north, and the
enemy will not be glad to see their blue among our khaki.

The attack this morning from Robecq, below St.-Venant,
down to Givenchy, is a serious effort to gain the La Bassee
Canal and form a strong defensive flank for the enemy
while he proceeds with his battles further north, and also
to get more elbow room from the salient, in which he is
narrowly wedged below Merville. For this purpose he has
brought up several more divisions, including the 239th,
which was in the Somme fighting of March, but not heav-
ily engaged. This one attacked our troops at Robecq, and
up to the time of my latest knowledge were repulsed with
heavy losses. Our troops in the line from Robecq to the
south of Givenchy were the 61st, 4th, 3rd, 1st, and nth
Divisions.

It was at a place called La Bacquerolles Farm, near Ro-
becq, where, after heavy shelling, last night the enemy
rushed one of our outposts at ten o'clock in order to fa-
cilitate the attack this morning of the German divisions
north and south. At four o'clock this morning the German
guns began a heavy bombardment of our lines as far down
as Givenchy, and maintained it for five hours, using large
numbers of gas shells on account of the north-east wind,
which was in their favour. His guns shelled the bridges
across the canal, in the hope of preventing our supports go-
ing up. Then his troops came forward in waves on a wide
front. They were in immense numbers, as usual, with
many mixed battalions.

The 9th Division to-day took prisoners from ten differ-
ent regiments. There were some ten German divisions
facing four of ours north of Bethune, and all along the line
our troops were much outnumbered. Nevertheless, the
enemy was repulsed at all but a few points of attack and

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 329

beaten back bloodily. The fiercest fighting began opposite
Givenchy and Festubert, east of Bethune, and for several
hours this morning, which is the latest I know, the enemy's
efforts had failed against the wonderful resistance of our
troops. Two hundred prisoners were captured further
north of this, of different regiments, as I have said, and
nineteen men of the 468th Infantry Regiment were brought
in from the ground about La Bacquerolles, where many
of their dead are lying.

We seem to have lost one advanced post, but the 17th
German Division, who tried to storm the high ground of
Givenchy itself, were raked by our fire. It was in that
place that the Lancashires of the 55th Division made such
a great and gallant defence, and our troops there are now
fighting just as hard.

The result of all this battle to-day cannot yet be told
with any certainty, because it is not yet over. But what
is certain is that the enemy has again suffered huge losses,
not only from machine-gun and rifle fire, but from the shell-
fire of field-guns and heavies, which have caught his men
in their assembly places and moving along roads with ter-
rible destructive effect, as our prisoners describe.

One regiment of the 42nd German Division has lost over
50 per cent, of its strength, and others are on a similar
scale. These ghastly casualties have been piling up along
this line between Merville and Bethune since the 13th of this
month when the Germans have made a series of small at-
tacks as a prelude to to-day's battle, owing, it seems, to bat-
talion officers taking the initiative without orders from the
High Command, in order to push forward and break our
lines if they could find weakness there.

On the 13th and 14th some of our South Country troops
of the 5th Division, who had just come back from Italy,
were attacked by strong forces repeatedly, and on the sec-
ond day for five hours at a stretch the enemy endeavoured
to come across from houses and enclosures west of Merville
towards St.-Venant. The 5th Division had two brigades

330 THE WAY TO VICTORY

— the 13th and the 95th — engaged in this battle. In the
13th Brigade were the West Kents, Scottish Borderers, and
Warwicks ; and in the 95th, the Devons, Duke of Cornwall's
Light Infantry, Gloucesters and East Surreys. For those
five hours our lads fired with rifles, Lewis-guns, and ma-
chine-guns into solid bodies of Germans, and their field-
guns tore gaps in the enemy's formations and broke up their
assemblies before attacks could proceed. One advance in
five waves was mown down before it could make any prog-
ress, and others were dealt with in the same way, while
prisoners say that our fire, which swept their ranks, was
terrifying and most destructive. Other South Country
and Scottish troops of the 61 st Division along this and
other sectors of the battle-front fired their rifles as never
before. The enemy find it difficult to get ammunition up,
and one gunner prisoner says that three guns out of his
battery were destroyed by direct hits.

On April 15 some of our areoplanes attacked troops as-
sembling for an advance on the forest of Lamotte, and
scattered them with machine-gun fire, while our guns after-
wards pounded them and broke up the attack before it
could start. This destructive fire of ours has been contin-
uous for a week, and beyond all doubt the German troops
engaged on this Merville front have been frightfully pun-
ished.

The situation up north to-day has not changed much
since I described it yesterday. Meteren seems to be in
No Man's Land, and it is doubtful how the line exactly runs
in the Wytschaete sector. The enemy has been making
persistent efforts to break through to Kemmel Hill.

On the whole our line of battle is more secure than it
has been for several days past, and with French co-opera-
tion we may be justified in believing that the enemy may at
any rate be held in his present positions, though he may yet
concentrate further masses of men and guns on this north-
ern sector. Even German reserves are not inexhaustible,
and for whatever ground the enemy gains the price he is

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 3B1

paying in blood and mortality is so high that the wake of
his advance is one long graveyard, and his hopes must be
dying with his lost men. That at least is the belief of
our troops, and they mean to make it so, however great
their own sacrifice.

IV

A Day of Slaughter

April 18
It was a black day for the enemy yesterday all along the
line of his attack between Robecq and Givenchy, and espe-
cially at the southern end by Givenchy itself, where he
made desperate efforts to gain our defences on the high
ground there.

In my first account yesterday I described how he flung
five hours' bombardment on to our lines — the noise of it
and of our answering guns was stupendous when I went
up to that part of the countryside — and how he then at-
tacked in heavy strength, being repulsed almost everywhere
with staggering losses. At the end of the day all his ef-
forts ended in bloody failure, in spite of the daring cour-
age of his troops, who sacrificed themselves under our
fire and were only able to gain a few bits of trench-work
and one or two outposts below our fortified works at Gi-
venchy, which are quite useless to them for immediate or
future use.

It was a big attack for which they had prepared in a
formidable way. After the shock of their repulse by Lan-
cashire men of the 55th Division, who were relieved by the
1st Division, which I have described in detail, they in-
creased the strength of their heavy artillery by three times,
bringing up large numbers of howitzers, including 11 -inch
monsters, massed new divisions in front of us, and deter-
mined to smash through in the wake of the tremendous
bombardment. For five hours, as I have said, this storm

332 THE WAY TO VICTORY

went on with high explosives and gas, and our devoted men
had to suffer this infernal fire. It was the worst ordeal
that human beings may be called upon to bear, this stand-
ing to while all the earth is upheaved and the air is thick
with shell splinters, but when the bombardment passed and
the German infantry came forward, our men received them
with blasts of machine-gun fire, incessant volleys of rifle-
fire, and a trench-mortar bombardment that burst with
deadly effect among the attacking troops. This trench-
mortar barrage of ours was one of the most awful means
of slaughter yesterday, especially when the enemy tried to
cross La Bassee Canal further north; and in that sector
our infantry and gunner officers say that more Germans
were killed yesterday along the canal bank than on any other
day since the fighting in this neighbourhood. One bat-
tery of trench-mortars did most deadly execution until
their pits were surrounded, and only two of their crews
were able to escape. Our machine-gunners fought out in
the open after some of their positions had been wiped out
by the gun-fire, and caught the enemy waves at fifty yards'
range and mowed them down.

But the enemy was not checked for a long time, in spite
of his losses, and when one body fell another came up to
fill their place, and press on into any gap that had been made
by their artillery or their own machine-gun sections. There
was one such momentary gap between a body of the Black
Watch of the ist Division, who had been weakened by
shell-fire, and some of the Gloucesters further north, and
into this the enemy tried to force a way. Other Scottish
troops were in reserve, and when it became clear that a
portion of our line was endangered by this turning move-
ment the Camerons came forward with grim intent, and by
a fierce counter-attack swept through the gap and flung
back the enemy, so that the position was restored. Further
north some Gloucesters of the ist Division were fighting
the enemy both ways, as once before in history when they
fought back to back, thereby winning the honour of wear-

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 333

ing their cap badge back and front, which they do to this
day. Germans had worked behind»them as well as in front
of them, and they were in a tight corner, but did not yield,
and finally, after hard fighting, cleared the ground about
them. Meanwhile further south some North Lancashire
troops on the canal had lost some parts of their front line
under an intense bombardment, but still fought on in the
open, repulsing every effort to drive them back, and smash-
ing the enemy out of their positions, so that the only rem-
nants of German outposts clung on until late last night, up
to which time there was savage strife on both sides.

At one time there was fierce hand-to-hand fighting round
one of our battalion headquarters to which the Germans
penetrated, and a gallant and successful defence made by
servants and staff. Elsewhere in yesterday's battle Welsh-
men— the 2nd Welsh Regiment and South Wales Border-
ers— fought stubbornly and with greatest gallantry in hours
most critical for our success along this line. They were
fighting in small parties, holding on to isolated bits of
ground and rallying to counter-attack when the enemy had
got a footing in forward lines.

The battle spread up northwards over a wide front, and
on another sector of the line some of our English battal-
ions of the 4th Division engaged the enemy's masses and
destroyed them so utterly that at the end of the day they
had gained nothing after terrible casualties on their side.
Part of this fighting was round the farm called Riez du
Vinage, where a day or two ago some of our South Coun-
try troops — Somersets and Hampshires — made a dashing
attack and captured prisoners and machine-guns.

The attack north of Givenchy was at a different time
from that down south. It began at four in the morning
and took place in half darkness, and was all over by seven
in the morning, when German troops were demoralized and
beaten by the severity of their losses. In Pacquart Wood,
nearby, their assemblies were raked by machine-gun fire,
and when they left the wood many others fell. One col-

334 THE WAY TO VICTORY

umn of assault drove into the hamlet of Riez du Vinage,
and the King's Own were forced to retire a little, and after-
wards drew back to another chance of counter-attack.

Extraordinary scenes took place on the canal bank when
the enemy tried to cross. In the twilight of early dawn a
party came out of the wood and tried to get across the
water, but were seen by our machine-gunners and shot
down. Then another body of men advanced, and carried
with them a floating bridge, but when those who were not
hit reached the water's edge they found the bridge as fixed
did not reach to the other side. Some of them walked on
to it, expecting, perhaps, to jump the gap, but they were
shot off, and other men on the bank were also caught un-
der our fire. A corporal of our men went down to the
canal edge, and flung hand-grenades at the Germans still
struggling to fix their bridge, and then a lieutenant and a
few men rushed down and pulled the bridge on to our side
of the bank. Later this young officer saw one of our pon-
toons drifting down, and he swam out to it and caught hold
of it and made it fast beyond the enemy's reach, but in a
position so that some of our men of the King's Own and
Seaforths ran across and caught the enemy under their fire
on his side of the canal.

At seven o'clock yesterday morning a white handker-
chief was hoisted by the enemy. Three hundred of them
made signs of surrender. Some of them changed their
minds at the last moment and ran away, but 150 gave them-
selves up, and some of them swam the canal in order to
reach our side for this purpose. They were shivering, in
their wet clothes and in the north-east wind which lashed
over the battle-lines yesterday, and they were very miser-
able men.

Yesterday evening it was decided to recapture the
ground, which, as I have said, had been left in the enemy
hands near Riez du Vinage, and this attack was made by
the King's Own, and succeeded easily. This morning our
patrols went out gathering up odd men and small parties of

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 335

the enemy as prisoners. In this sector they have lost all
stomach for the fight, having suffered fearful things since
they have been in the line from our artillery fire and the
defence of our men.

Many of them are hungry, having been six days on two
days' rations, and they bemoan the losses of their compan-
ions and battalions. The 4th Ersatz Division, for instance,
was severely mauled in the battles of the first phase of the
German offensive, and was then sent further north, where,
according to prisoners' letters, they devoutly hoped for rest
on a quiet sector after their blood bath. But while that
letter was still in the man's pocket, and while he and his
comrades were marching up to Merville, this new battle
was being ordered by the German commanders, and these
poor wretches were flung in without warning. They say
that our harassing fire on roads and camps in all the coun-
try between Armentieres and La Bassee is simply fear-
ful, and that all day long and all night their transport and
their working parties — thousands of men are working fe-
verishly on road-making with concrete slabs — are slashed
to pieces, while there is never any rest or safety for them.
Six German divisions were engaged yesterday, and all of
them suffered many casualties, so that for some time at
least, until they recover from the shock which our men
gave them, the heart has been knocked out of them.

How long is this massacre of men going on? It is
reaching heights of horror which the world has hardly seen
in its history. The senselessness of it makes one despair
of humanity. For what do these Germans hope to gain
out of all this sacrifice, these field-grey men who come
swarming upon our lines, wave after wave, gaining ground
or not gaining ground, but always leaving a wake of dead
and dying and mangled men behind them? The German
High Command is out for victory domination at all costs
save that of their own skins and blood, but not even the
full and brutal victory which they are failing to gain would
give any increase of comfort or any forgetfulness of agony

336 THE WAY TO VICTORY

to these German soldiers who are sent into that carnage.
Yet it goes on, and will go on until even they revolt from
increasing slaughter.

Up in the north, between Wytschaete and Bailleul, where
the French are fighting with us, there were no further at-
tacks on a big scale after the preparatory efforts to cap-
ture Kemmel Hill. The enemy is probably pausing, be-
fore striking another blow with full weight by troops spe-
cially trained to hill-fighting, like the Jaegers and nth Ba-
varians and Alpine corps from the mountain districts in
Germany. The Alpine troops have so far not indulged
their spirits with plunder on a big scale, which is their in-
tention, as revealed in one of their letters.

"We have made up our minds," wrote one of them, "to
plunder ruthlessly, and that is the beauty of the whole
thing. In the Alpine Corps we understand the business. "

Meanwhile in the north the Belgians are justly elated
over their brilliant success, in which they attacked and cap-
tured 700 of the enemy. According to the account of
Belgian officers, their gallant troops went into action sing-
ing and waving their helmets to salute their flying men,
who flew low overhead, and every man was uplifted by
enthusiasm. The enemy was hard hit by them. He will
get more such knocks from the armies of Britain, France,
and Belgium now barring his path.

Monday
No big infantry attacks have been launched by the enemy
during the past few days since his costly failures round
Givenchy, but in my opinion this pause is simply due to
his intention to prepare fully, by massing of heavy guns
and new divisions, for another phase of his offensive on a
scale as equal as possible to that of March 21. Owing to
his immense losses during the last four weeks — I see they
are calculated roughly as reaching about 400,000 men —
his most stupendous efforts will hardly enable him to bring
into line anything like that first assembly of divisions, but

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 337

he has still very large numbers of men available, and I
have no doubt he is now engaged in putting them into po-
sition for immediate action. Where he will attempt to
strike next will soon be known; he is threatening all along
the line from Ypres to the Somme.

Last night at ten o'clock he began a violent bombard-
ment of our lines north of Aveluy Wood on the Ancre,
and this was followed by fierce fighting in the darkness
which lasted until four o'clock this morning. It was a
night which favoured such an enterprise, for the sky was
clear and it was possible for men to see their way some
distance ahead, though not visible themselves until quite
close. Our men were ready for them, and there was se-
vere fighting on both sides. Apart from that action, there
was only harassing fire and outpost encounters from one
end of the line to the other.

April 20
Almost for the first day since that March 21 — now just a
calendar month ago since the enemy began his massed at-
tacks in immense strength, with intent to destroy our ar-
mies and divide us from the French — there has been no
German action against us, and our front has quietened
down into desultory shelling.

We may claim honestly and thankfully that this is due
to our battalions in line from Wytschaete and Kemmel to
the Ancre and the Somme, who, by their most determined
resistance under long and fierce bombardment and against
fresh storm troops far outnumbering themselves, beat off
the enemy's last efforts to break their front and hurled him
back with ghastly losses.

Otherwise there would have been no pause. For had the
enemy smashed past the Givenchy Keep the day before
yesterday and crossed the La Bassee Canal north of
Bethune, his crowded divisions and field artillery would
have sought to surge through on the roads to the Aire in
another drive. Or had he succeeded in turning Kemmel

338 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Hill and storming the heights of Mont Rouge and Mont
Noir there would have been no waiting policy, but the
German High Command would have flung in all their re-
serves in the attempt to force a gap and gain a way through
to the coast.

Our men lying out there in the ditches of Flanders, with
French troops mingled with them so that one sees a glint
of blue under one hedge and mud-coloured khaki under
another, repulsed all the attacks on Thursday and Friday
by their sweeping fire from ground that had been man-
gled by the bombardment about them, and smashed not
only those waves of German storm troops, but also the
plans of the German High Command. What the Germans
have reaped in the preliminary attacks beyond Bailleul, and
still more in their desperate attempts to break through
between Robecq and Givenchy, is a new harvest of bleed-
ing men garnered in field-hospitals behind their lines, and
filled with an unceasing wreckage of human life.

Another blow to them was their bloody repulse by the
Belgians on April 17. They had prepared an attack in
force. Besides three regiments of the 1st Landwehr Di-
vision, usually holding this sector between the Ypres-Sta-
den Railway and Kippe, they brought up from Dixmude
— poor Dixmude — into whose flaming ruins I went when it
was first bombarded in October of 1914 — two regiments
of the 6th Bavarian Division, and from the coast the 5th
Matrosen Regiment of the 2nd Naval Division, with a
regiment of the 58th Saxons.

It was a heavy force, and they hoped to surprise and
annihilate the Belgian resistance by their weight and quick-
ness of attack. The Belgians were waiting for them,
standing to in those swampy fields which they have held
against the enemy for three and a half years, always shelled,
always paying a daily toll of life and limb; not getting
much glory or recognition, because of the great battles
elsewhere, but patient and enduring as when I knew them

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 339

on the Yser in the first dreadful winter of the war, and
their little Regular Army fought to a finish.

Even before the battle last Wednesday the German Ma-
rines, Saxon troops, and Landwehr suffered misery and
lost many men. They lay out in the fiat wet fields two
nights previously, and were very cold and scared by the
Belgian gun-fire which burst among them. They had no
great artillery behind them, and the Saxons and the Ger-
man sailors now prisoners of the Belgians curse bitterly,
because they were expected to get through easily in spite
of this. The enemy's intention was to take Bixschoote and
advance across the Yser Canal, driving south to Pope-
ringhe. What they did by their massed attacks was to pene-
trate at a point near Hockske, south-east of Merckem, the
main weight of their pressure being directed along the
Bixschoote road.

The Belgians delivered a quick counter-attack with won-
derful enthusiasm among officers and men. They had a
perfect knowledge of the country, and used this fully by
striking up from a place called Luyghem in such a way
that the enemy was driven towards the swamp, where any
who went in sank up to the neck in ice-cold water. The
Germans were cut off from their own lines and trapped.
Seven hundred of them surrendered, men of all the regi-
ments I have mentioned, and they seemed to think them-
selves lucky at getting off so cheaply, though they quailed
when they were brought back through the towns behind
the lines, and the Belgian women, remembering many
things, raised a cry as these men passed. It was not a
pleasant sound. I heard it once in France, when a Ger-
man officer passed through with an escort. It was a cry
which made my blood run cold. But there is gladness
among the Belgian troops, for they had long waited for
their chance of striking, and made good.

So the German High Command cannot be well pleased
with the last four days of their record. Their time-table
has at least been disarranged, and the figures of the cas-

340 THE WAY TO VICTORY

ualties with which one day they must face their people grow
apace. What the German soldiers are saying about it all
we only know from prisoners, some of whom believe in
victory and are arrogant in that belief, but many of whom
are disillusioned and despairing.

One curious document has fallen into our hands, re-
vealing a disaffected spirit in the German ranks. It is a
letter from a man of the 3rd Guards Division, written to
his brother in the 15th Reserve Division:

"I strongly advise you to hide yourself and remain be-
hind when your company goes into line. You needn't be
afraid of punishment. If you should be punished, it would
only be lightly, and that is better than being killed. When
I rejoined my company I heard that my best friend had
been killed, and that so affected me that I vowed I would
never go into the line again. You will find that you are
not the only one to remain behind. In fact, you will find
more than half the company there.

"At Passchendaele I was fool enough to go into the
line, and on our way our company got a full hit from an
enemy shell. Twenty-three were killed and twenty-eight
wounded in our platoon. The rest of the company was
blown to atoms. With much trouble we collected eight
men of the first platoon, twelve men of the second, and
one man of the third platoon.

"And what were the results of my devotion to duty?
Three days of charcoal fumes, no sleep, wet to the skin,
boots full of slime and mud, my heart in my boots, my
eyes closed — waiting for death. Wise ones had remained
and made themselves comfortable. "

A grim picture of an unrecorded episode of war like
thousands of others month by month. But the spirit of this
letter shows that, in spite of courage, some German sol-
diers at least are asking themselves why they should be
so sacrificed in this shambles for the blood lust of their

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 341

leaders. After last week's battles many thousands of them
must repent of their belief in a cheap and easy victory over
the British armies. But that will make no difference to
men like Ludendorff. The check they got last week will
make no difference to their policy of bringing up all the
possible weight of men and guns and hurling it against the
British and French troops. They will make — perhaps be-
fore these words are printed, certainly before many days
have passed — another and greater attempt to capture Kem-
mel, and their recent inactivity on the Somme does not
mean at all that they have given up the idea of seizing
the high ground beyond Albert and advancing past Vil-
lers-Bretonneux towards Amiens. They are only biding
their time before striking again with more men and more
guns.

After being on the Flanders front and seeing the pan-
orama of that battle between Kemmel and Bailleul, with its
flaming villages and farms, where lately our dear men,
who had been fighting incessantly for many days, were
supported and relieved in certain sectors by French troops,
I went to-day southwards to see how things are about the
Somme, where the enemy stays below Villers-Bretonneux
on the south side of the river, and in Vaire Wood, beyond
Corbie on the north side, with Amiens still so far from
them that its high cathedral and shining roofs, dim through
the mists which rise from the river, must seem like a mirage
mocking at their hopes.

They are shelling Amiens each day with high velocities
from long-range guns, and as I passed through to-day
the savage howl of these things came overhead. At night
they bomb it from waves of aeroplanes, as a week or two
ago when I was there. On a clear moonlight night these
raiders came over and dropped their explosives, killing and
wounding women and children and slaughtering poor
beasts, so that the white light of the moon shone down
upon dead horses lying in pools of blood.

Most of the enemy's shelling is on the railway, but his

342 THE WAY TO VICTORY

bombs are scattered about this great old city, which for
me and many others in this war is crowded with memories,
some happy and some pitiful; of charming people there
who became our friends ; of little dinners with officers who
came for a brief spell between their battles; of shopping
expeditions, when there was always laughter and sparkling
eyes behind the counter; of walks along the Somme on
summer days, with the birds singing above the rumble of
the gun-fire away there where the river was red with blood,
and of moonlit walks about the close of the cathedral, so
beauteous in its white miracle of stone, so high and grand
above all the strife of men, and yet so touched with ten-
derness, as it seemed to me, for all the aching hearts that
came to stand awhile below its tall, straight columns —
women and children, muddy soldiers, French and English,
Australians and Scots, peasant-girls and great ladies — with
the light streaming through the painted windows upon
them, and a listening silence in their souls.

I was very glad to see to-day that the cathedral has not
been hit by shell-fire. Some high explosives of bomb or
shell have burst near it, but have only scarred its walls and
buttresses and broken some of its windows. That is sad
enough, for they were windows of old glass, dating from
the fifteenth century, and it was priceless. But we are
still saved the tragedy of losing the beauty of that great
shrine which holds so much of the soul of France, and is
one of the treasures of the world. . . . Poor Amiens! It
was in sadness that I passed through her streets to-day,
with that sense of sinister menace which always comes to
one in a city under fire, like Arras or Armentieres. Be-
yond I travelled to ground from which one looks on to the
German positions and the line of country across the Somme
which will be our next battlefields when the enemy makes
another thrust this way.

Immediately in front of where I stood, across the river,
was Villers-Bretonneux, with the ruins made during re-
cent weeks, and now all jagged and fretted on the sky-

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 343

line, like the crumbling battlements of a mediaeval castle.
For several days the enemy has been pouring gas shells into
it, and I saw this work being done this morning, and each
shell burst with a yellowish cloud in which there is deadly
poison, fatal if one is without his gas-mask. Some shells
came howling on my side of the river, but, apart from these
and odd bursts of machine-gun fire, the battle-line was
strangely quiet — quiet, but grim and sinister.

Sunday
In the morning the sky was dark and heavy along the
front with storm clouds, and in places the snow fell thick
enough to whiten the fields for an hour or two. This April
snow was strange, for it rested on hedges already white
with blossoming thorn, and on fruit-trees in orchards that
are laden with the promise of this year's harvest.

A north-east wind came moaning over the battle-lines,
and through the clouds there were passing gleams of sun-
light which touched the ruins of that charred village of
Villers-Bretonneux, in which clouds of foul vapours
roamed, and along the barren ridge which rises from the
southern bank of the Somme to Vaire Wood, where the
enemy has his outposts. At the moment the guns were
mostly silent. Only here and there and now and then
there were flashes from the valley of the Somme, and
five sharp hammer-strokes from a battery in action, be-
tween sudden splutterings of machine-gun fire. Mean-
while, in the villages behind the lines near the point of
liaison and along the roads which lead to those sectors of
the front, our troops are mingled with the French, who
are also reinforcing us in the region of Bailleul. They
come marching along with full packs — and the French
"Poilu's" pack is very full, rising high above his blue hel-
met, for he stuffs a mass of things inside for the comfort
of the outer and inner man, with extra pairs of boots and
tin pots for warming his food, and some dog's-eared books
for quiet moments under shell-fire, and tobacco tins and

344 THE WAY TO VICTORY

bits of chocolate mixed up with his vests and love-letters
and old socks. But he carries all this like a snail carries
its shell — as part of himself, and does not seem over-
burdened. With their rifles stacked on the side-walks they
stroll up and down the streets of villages which bear the
wound marks of war, with gaps and wreckage between their
houses, and brick-work scarred with shrapnel, and carry
on friendly conversations with Australian soldiers, Tom-
mies, Jocks, and our traffic men, who are the masters of
ceremony along the roads of war, and friendly souls to
old women, small children, wandering Chinamen, stray
dogs, and the girls at the level crossings between one trans-
port column and another. These French and English con-
versations are interesting and peculiar. With few words
like "good," "no," "bon," "fini," "sale boche," eked out
by shrugs, winks, bursts of laughter, and the language of
signs the soldiers of both nations understand each other
perfectly, and establish the friendliest relations. This min-
gling of blue and khaki has changed the colour scheme in
some of our scenes of war, and gives one a sense of closer
union with the spirit and valour of France. French am-
bulances and British ambulances, their wounded and ours,
pass each other down some of the roads, and on the same
battlefields men of France and England are together.

A day or two ago I saw some of our walking wounded
in Flanders, making their way slowly to field dressing-
stations. They had their arms about each other for mu-
tual support, and limped painfully through the village,
which the enemy was harassing with scattered shells. Two
French officers standing by watched these wounded pass,
and one of them said, 'Those English boys know how to
suffer bravely." Presently a French soldier, hit in the
leg, stumbled by on the arm of one of our men, and the
officer said, "Cest l'Entente cordiale de la souffrance"
(It is the cordial understanding of pain).

Our men are stoical in suffering. In the casualty clear-
ing-stations to which they came back in large numbers dur-

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 345

ing the worst days of these battles, there was hardly any
moan among them, even in the wards where the badly
wounded lay. In one place I went to during the hardest
fighting on the Somme, there was a great congestion of
wounded, owing to the way in which some of our field-
hospitals had to pack up their tents and evacuate their pa-
tients with the enemy bearing down on them. It was an
old place like a mediaeval castle, with thick, high walls
around, and in long rooms, built perhaps for barracks, our
wounded lay in rows on the floors, stretcher by stretcher,
in long vistas of blanketed bodies, upstairs and downstairs.
It was a castle of pain, and no poet of the Middle Ages
writing an allegory of human suffering caused by the evil
spell of man's own wickedness could have conjured up a
more tragic vision than was here on these bare boards,
where English, Scottish, and Irish lads lay waiting for the
surgeons after great battles against an overwhelming
enemy, more cruel than any devouring dragon or monster
of mythology. But they did not groan very much.
Hardly at all, except when a man turned and moaned in
his sleep. One only heard the hard breathing of many
suffering men, and now and then long, quivering sighs.
Many of them were smoking as they lay still with wide-
open eyes, and their courage was as fine here as on the
field of battle.

Nearest to Amiens

April 24
After a very heavy bombardment the enemy attacked
Villers-Bretonneux this morning with two divisions, and
as I write the battle is in progress. So far his troops have
not advanced far, but seem to be in the outskirts of the
village.

Villers-Bretonneux is that village on the ridge south-east

346 THE WAY TO VICTORY

of Amiens, which I have described several times lately,
after seeing it fiercely shelled by high explosives and gas.
It is a place of some size, where we used to have a corps
headquarters and administrative offices, but for the last
two weeks or more it has gradually been smashed and
ruined under the enemy's fire, and is now seen as a line
of fretted walls and broken buildings on high ground above
the Somme, with clouds of yellowish gas floating about it.
It is an important position in reference to Amiens, perched
up there on the hill above the Somme, and its capture was
the definite objective of the enemy this morning, including
ground beyond it, making a total depth of advance of four
or five kilometres, should they succeed. They also intended
to take the village of Cachy, on the road from Villers-
Bretonneux to Boves, which is on the River Avre, due
east of Amiens.

I was in Boves yesterday afternoon when all was fairly
quiet, except for harassing fire and counter-battery work in
the neighbourhood until about four o'clock when a heavy
bombardment began on both sides all along this line. It
does not seem to have lasted long and was destructive shoot-
ing against gun positions. For some days our field-bat-
teries have been severely engaged, and the enemy's artil-
lery has searched for them continually in order to knock
out the guns and gunners, as I heard yesterday from one
of our gunnery officers as he sat on his kit outside a small
tent, in a little orchard laden with blossom, on the edge
of this zone of fire, and asked me for general news of the
war, and then with a "So long," said, "I must be going
up to the battery.', He went up, not knowing that be-
fore night passed he would be in the midst of another bat-
tle, after long and tragic adventures on the way down from
the railway embankment by St.-Quentin, beginning on that
day, March 21, from which we date all recent history. His
gunners had never rested since then.

To-day the German bombardment broke loose in all its
fury at about three o'clock in the morning, and lasted until

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 347

something like 6.45, when these two divisions of infantry
advanced upon Villers-Bretonneux and Cachy from Han-
gard Wood and Marcelcave and the ground below War-
fusee. They were the 4th Guards Division, who have al-
ready been heavily engaged twice in these recent battles,
and are now for the third time, with the 77th Division
recently from Russia, and not before in action on this front.
They are mostly Rhinelanders and Westphalians, with
groups of Alsatians. The Guards, after their heavy losses,
have received fresh drafts from Berlin, and are fairly up
to strength again. At the same time as this attack Was
launched this morning a third German division, the 13th,
made up also of Westphalian troops, attacked the French
near Castel, to the southwards of us, gaining footing for
a time, it seems on the rising ground, round which French
troops pivoted from the right and threw them back. On
our front the enemy used Tanks for the first time in this
offensive, though there have been many reports that he was
about to do so. But these were seen beyond all doubt,
three of them advancing with German infantry down the
road to Cachy and Domart. It is possible that, also for the
first time in this war, there will be Tanks engaged against
Tanks, like a naval engagement between cruisers.

The enemy was able for a time to get a footing in the
outskirts of Villers-Bretonneux, where there has been
close and hard fighting, but my latest news is that all our
positions round Hangard Wood are intact, and that the
enemy has suffered many losses from our artillery and
machine-gun fire.

To-morrow I may have more to tell. Except for a Ger-
man raid near Albert and a minor engagement near Ro-
becq, in which our men took sixty prisoners, no infantry
action has taken place on the rest of the front, but all along
the line the enemy has been shooting heavily from Ypres
downwards, wherever his guns can reach. It is, perhaps,
the tuning-up of his artillery for another phase of his
offensive. To-day's battle at Villers-Bretonneux has, as I

348 THE WAY TO VICTORY

have told, only limited and short objectives, and is planned
altogether differently from previous actions since March 21,
which have been unlimited in their objectives, with troops
under orders to push as far forward as possible wherever
they could find a gap or a weakening. It is perhaps re-
action caused by slaughter of massed attacks which failed
definitely at Arras and from Givenchy northwards.

April 25
In my account yesterday of the fighting round Villers-
Bretonneux I was only able to give the narrative up to the
point when the enemy had reached the outskirts of the vil-
lage, after his attack with large numbers of infantry and
some Tanks upon the English battalions of the 8th Division,
who included Berkshires, Northamptons, Middlesex, and
East Lancashires.

After that many things have happened, for we lost Vil-
lers-Bretonneux completely. The enemy was in possession
of it and of the neighbouring ground long enough to stuff it
with men and machine-guns, and up to ten o'clock last
night believed that he held it firmly and permanently. But
after that hour it seems that a change in the situation was
made by a brilliant counter-attack of Australian troops,
who, by the most skilful and daring piece of generalship,
were sent forward in the darkness, without preliminary
artillery preparation, and, relying absolutely on the weapons
they carried, to regain this important position, which gave
the enemy full observation of our positions on both sides
of the Somme valley beyond Amiens.

The splendid courage of the Australian troops, the cun-
ning of their machine-gunners, and the fine leadership of
their officers, achieved success, and in conjunction with
English battalions they spent the night clearing out the
enemy from the village, where he made a desperate re-
sistance, and brought back altogether something like 700
or 800 prisoners. It was a complete reversal of fortune
for the enemy, and, in this twenty-four hours of fighting

THE NORTHERN ATTACK

349

RHEIMS

Railways -

LINES OF GERMAN ADVANCE AFTER FLANDERS

OFFENSIVE

350 THE WAY TO VICTORY

he has lost large numbers of men, whose bodies lie in heaps
between Villers-Bretonneux and Warfusee, and all about
the ruins and fields in that neighbourhood. Owing to the
late hour of this counter-attack I knew nothing of what had
happened in the night until I went down early this morning
to that sector of our front, and saw scenes which at once
revealed this turn of fortune's wheel.

The village of Villers-Bretonneux itself, which I saw
above the valley of the Somme, down which I passed, was
no longer under fire, either from our guns or from the
enemy's, and from its quietude it seemed as if a truce had
been declared there, though, as I learnt quickly, there was
no truce, but only a cessation of gun-fire, because the Aus-
tralian, English, and German soldiers were still mixed up so
closely that shelling was impossible on both sides. Even
now German machine-gunners entirely cut off from their
lines by the counter-attack, resisting in bits of ruin and
below banks near the village on the western side, were
maintaining fire on our men, who were engaged in routing
them out.

Several of our roads showed every sign of murderous fire
which German gunners had flung about yesterday, and many
dead horses lay about the tracks. But passing them were
living men, though many of them had the ash-grey look of
dead bodies, and they were Germans in the field grey of
their army, and now our prisoners. There were many of
them trudging slowly away from the battlefields under
escort of English and Australian soldiers in small parties,
here and there with only two or three of our men guarding
them, and one long column numbering several hundred.

All through the morning I saw these groups limping
slowly back. Some of them carried stretchers high on
their shoulders with bodies of their own wounded officers
and men, and now and again they halted on the roadside
and laid their stretchers down, and I saw gaunt faces star-
ing up beneath grey overcoats — gaunt, grey faces of men
gravely wounded. At the head of some of these parties

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 351

walked German officers in steel helmets, holding themselves
stiffly, but punctilious in saluting us, and non-commissioned
officers marshalled their own men with rasping commands,
as though still on their own side of the lines. They were
tall, sturdy bodies of men, but with a worn famished look
not surprising to see after their night of terror, and many
hours without food, as they were cut off from supplies by
our artillery fire before the battle. The biggest crowd I
saw came marching in front of the Australian headquarters
this morning, and the staff officers, who had been working
all night in the direction of the battle, came out to see
these "birds," and were glad to see so many of them as
visible proof of success. There would have been thirty
more but for two German shells, which caught this column
as they were leaving Villers-Bretonneux, killing that num-
ber on the road. Many of the others whom I now saw, and
who lay down on the grass in every attitude of exhaustion,
were bespattered with blood, which mixed in clots on the
white dust of their clothes. The held in which they lay
was all silver and gold with daisies and buttercups, and
these heaps of field-grey men, in their grim helmets, which
give them a strange malignant look, spread themselves out
on this lawn, and some of them slept until their sergeants
shouted to them again, and they lined up for their rations.
They were men who had been fighting all night in Villers-
Bretonneux — fighting with two fingers pressed to the
triggers of machine-guns, fighting with rifles over bits of
wall and through the slits in walls of ruined houses, until
English and Australian troops got round them and shouted
"Hands up!" They were men of German divisions, who
yesterday morning at six o'clock went with their Tanks to
seize the village which had been swept by fire for hours,
and rilled with gas shells, so that they did not expect such
trouble. What happened then relates exclusively to Eng-
lish battalions, for in the beginning of the attack the
Australian front was hardly touched, except for minor

352 THE WAY TO VICTORY

affairs at Sailly-le-Sec, in which enemy parties were re-
pulsed with losses.

But in Villers-Bretonneux and around it were our East
Lancashire, Middlesex, Berkshire, and Northampton
troops, with West Yorkshires and others. They had to
endure a terrible ordeal of many hours of monstrous fire,
so intense that an officer of the Middlesex, who was in the
Foreign Legion before he entered this war and has been
through many battles, says this gun-fire is the worst he has
seen. He is a hardened man, schooled to the endurance of
fire if any man may be, but amongst his men were some
young soldiers who have come up as drafts. The enemy
was favoured by mist, for which he had been waiting, and
under cover of this he sent his Tanks into action for the
first time. There were four or five of them of heavier
armament than ours, with 2-inch guns and four machine-
guns. Two or three of them moved to the eastern side of
Villers-Bretonneux, working up our trenches there, and
another, or more than one, team came along the valley be-
low the village and turned up to the western side.

Four divisions, not two, as I said yesterday before we
had full identifications, took part in this attack. They were
the 4th Guards, the 77th — quite new to this phase of the
war — 228th, and 243rd. This morning our intelligence
officers obtained identifications of twelve regiments in each
division and of each company in each battalion. They
were in full strength of divisions, and a great weight of
men on such a narrow front against one of ours that had
already been under frightful fire, and had been living in
clouds of poison gas with their masks on. The officer
of the Middlesex to whom I have referred was in a bit of a
trench when the first German Tank attacked his men on the
east side of the village, and it went right over him as he
lay crouching, and travelled on accompanied by bodies of
troops. The Middlesex and West Yorks put up a great
fight, but had to give ground to superior numbers. East
Lancashires, who were the garrison of Villers-Bretonneux,

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 353

were also attacked with great odds, and after a brave re-
sistance fell back with the general line, which took up
position, towards the end of this first phase of the battle
west of Villers-Bretonneux and in the edge of Bois l'Abbe,
to the left of it.

Into this wood in the course of the day a German patrol
of one officer and forty men made their way, and stayed
there out of touch with their own men, and were taken
prisoners last night. Last night the enemy seemed secure
in Villers-Bretonneux, and, as I have said, crammed it with
machine-guns and men.

The Australians then decided to make a night attack.
"It looked a pretty mad thing to do," said one of their
generals, but in war it is the pretty mad thing which some-
times brings the best victory, for audacity wins when it is
carried out with judgment and skill. This morning his
prisoners were outside his headquarters as proof of his
achievement, and his men were still mopping up Villers-
Bretonneux.

It was difficult to attack suddenly like this. There was
no artillery preparation. There should have been a moon,
but by bad luck it was veiled in a thick, wet mist. It was
decided by the Australian general that his men should go
straight into the attack with the bayonet and machine-gun,
not waiting for artillery protection, which would tell the
enemy what was coming. The plan of attack was to push
forward in two bodies, and to encircle Villers-Bretonneux,
while some Northamptons, D. C.L.I. , and others were in
the centre with orders to fight through the village from the
north. This manoeuvre was carried out owing to the mag-
nificent courage of each Australian soldier and the gallantry
of their officers.

The Germans fought desperately when they found them-
selves in danger of being trapped. They had nests of
machine-guns along the railway embankment below the
village, and these fired fiercely, sweeping the attackers, who
tried to advance upon them. Those who worked round

354 THE WAY TO VICTORY

north and east of the village, also, came under a burst of
machine-gun fire from weapons hidden among the ruins
and in trenches, but they rounded up the enemy and fought
him, from one bit of ruin to another, in streets which used
to be rilled with civilian life only a few weeks ago, and
crowded with staff officers and staff cars, but now were
littered with dead bodies and raked by bullets. The Aus-
tralians captured two light field-guns which the enemy had
brought up in the morning according to his present habit
of advancing guns behind his third wave of men, and
several minenwerfer and many machine-guns. During the
night they and our English troops seized over 500 men as
prisoners, and sent them back, and several hundreds seem
to have been routed out to-day. Judging from those I saw
myself, the living were not so many as the dead.

It was fierce fighting in Villers-Bretonneux and around
it last night and this morning. The enemy fought until
put out by bayonet or rifle-bullet or machine-gun, and the
Australian officers say that they have never seen such piles
of dead, not even outside Bullecourt or Lagnicourt last
year, as those who lie about this village of frightful strife.

This morning the enemy were seen massing in Hangard
Wood, and our field-batteries wiped them out, and other
parties came "dribbling over" — it is the Australian way of
putting it — from Warfusee, and Australian guns swept
them away. Our horse artillery also had terrible targets.

German Tanks, though heavier than ours, with bigger
guns, have now beaten a retreat, leaving one of their type
in No Man's Land. It has a high turret and thick armour
plates, and is steered and worked on a different system
from ours. One of them was killed by a Tank of our old
class, and then we put in some of our newer, faster and
smaller types, which can steer almost as easily as motor-
cars, as I know, because I have travelled in one at a fast
pace over rough ground.

These set out to attack bodies of German infantry of the
77th Division, forming up near Cachy. It was a terrible

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 355

encounter, and when they returned this morning their flanks
were red with blood. They slew Germans, not by dozens
nor by scores, but by platoons and companies. They got
right among the masses of men, and swept them with fire,
and those they did not kill with their guns they crushed
beneath them, manoeuvring about and trampling them down
as they fell. It seems to have been as bloody a slaughter
as anything in this war. So Villers-Bretonneux is a black
name for Germans to-day. There are still German soldiers
in the town, holding out with their nests of machine-guns,
but they seem to be cut off, and we are working steadily
through it, so that by to-night it is expected to be cleared
of the last remaining enemy. If this is so it will be a hard
and bad blow to the German High Command, who wanted
this ground for further and bigger actions.

Having been down on the Somme, I can only give the
barest details of what has been happening up north in
Flanders around Kemmel Hill, where French and British
troops have been heavily engaged.

The enemy has made strong attacks for the possession of
Kemmel, which was defended by the French, and against
Dranoutre, which is to the south-east of Kemmel, the idea
being to put a pincers on the hill and then gain the line of
ridges known as Mont Noir, Mont Rouge, and the Scher-
penberg, which are of great importance in that flat land of
Flanders. For a time the enemy seems to have made prog-
ress, and it is now reported that he has reached the crest
of Kemmel and the village of Dranoutre. If so that is
grave news.

He has no fewer than seven divisions in the line and in
reserve opposite this part of the Front, including the Alpine
Corps and the nth Bavarian Division, selected as mountain
warriors for these molehills of Flanders, and the 56th
Division, not previously engaged in any of the battles last
month or this, and battalions of Jaegers. The main Ger-
man thrust has come against the French up there in the
north, and our left has, so far, only been lightly engaged.

356 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Out of all this intense fighting one thing is clear, and that
is that the enemy is now making slow progress and that
every attack is costing him an immense price. God knows
how long he will fling his men into this massacre.

VI

The Hills of Flanders

April 27
It seems to me fairly certain now that, after being thwarted
in the first stupendous efforts to drive between the French
and British armies by the capture of Amiens and an ad-
vance towards Abbeville, and again to smash the British
Army by rolling us up from Givenchy to Arras, the enemy
has decided to hurl a strong force northwards and to strike
for the coast through Flanders. That, in my opinion, is
the lesson to be learnt from the recent fighting between
Bailleul and Wytschaete, working up on Thursday to
furious assaults upon the Franco-British lines and the
capture of Kemmel Hill. There cannot be much doubt
as to the enemy's intention. Indeed, he has already re-
vealed it, and a child familiar with the lie of the land in
Flanders could tell what his next objectives would be.
After the capture of Kemmel, which commands a wide
tract of country south of Ypres, and his advance yesterday
through Dranoutre to Locre, to the south-west of Kemmel,
he will endeavour to pinch out the three remaining hills
of the Scherpenberg, Mont Rouge, and Mont Noir, which
dominate the ground south of Poperinghe.

He was already feeling his way towards the Scherpen-
berg yesterday afternoon, and pouring fire on that triplet
of hills, until he was repulsed very bloodily for the time be-
ing by French troops. But he will attack, and is attacking,
with more furious efforts, in the hope that if that high
ground falls into his hands the whole of the Ypres salient

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 357

and the country around Poperinghe may become untenable.
It is a big "if," which depends on the fortune of war and the
result of efforts which have already cost the enemy a great
price in men. As I said in my last message, the German
main thrust on Thursday and Friday was directed against
the French, who were defending Kemmel and Dranoutre,
with British troops on their left and right. The Germans
struck first on Thursday morning at the point of junction
between the French and ourselves up by Maedelstede Farm,
below the Petit Bois of Wytschaete, where on April 9 of
last year, before the Battle of Wytschaete and Messines,
we blew one of our largest mine craters with an explosion
which was like an outbreak of a vast volcano, and left a
yawning chasm there, down which afterwards men looked
and shuddered. Here, and as far north as the ground
between St.-Eloi and Vierstraat, were Scottish and British
battalions, and then our line ran north-eastwards across the
Ypres-Comines Canal past Hill 60 — the scene of another
mine explosion last year and of many previous mines, so
that all the ground here was upheaved — up to high ground
by Westhoek Ridge.

The German army of assault upon Kemmel and the sur-
rounding country was under the command of General Sixt
von Armin, who was our leading opponent in the long
struggle of the first Somme battles, and whose clear and
ruthless intelligence was revealed in the famous document
summing up the first phase of that fighting, when he
frankly confessed to many failures of organization and
supply, but with an acute criticism which was not that of a
weak or an indecisive man. He is a formidable antagonist
to have against us now, and it is well to know this.

Under his command as corps commanders were Generals
Sieger and von Eberhardt, and they had picked troops, in-
cluding Alpine Corps and strong Bavarian and Prussian
divisions specially trained for assault in such country as that
of Kemmel. Their plan of attack, to strike at the points
of junction between the French and ourselves east of Kem-

358 THE WAY TO VICTORY

mel, and also at the French troops south of it near Dran-
outre, proved for a time successful and by driving in wedges
they were able to make us fall back on the flanks and en-
circle Kemmel Hill after furious and heroic fighting by the
French and our own troops. Our men of the 9th Divi-
sion were in weak numbers compared with the strength
brought against them. Their withdrawal to new lines of
defence by Vierstraat, and the furious attacks at eleven
o'clock yesterday morning across the Ypres-Comines Canal
gave the enemy some ground in the region of St.-Eloi, the
Bluff, and the spoil-bank on the canal itself. It is vil-
lainous ground there, foul with the wreckage of old fight-
ing, but to us out here who have followed this war from
the beginning, the loss of any of it is saddening, because
of so many memories of heroism and tragedy haunting each
yard of earth.

British troops and Canadian troops were put to a supreme
test of courage to take and hold these places. Our glorious
old 3rd Division, commanded in those days of 19 15 and
1 91 6 by General Haldane, fought from St.-Eloi to the Bluff,
month in and month out, and lost many gallant officers
and men there after acts of courage which belong to his-
tory. Their graves were marked by white crosses, which
grew too fast in this strentch of barren and mangled earth.
And I remember with what emotion we went about these
places after the Battle of Wytschaete, when the enemy was
hurled back, and it seemed as though an evil spell had been
lifted from them. The Bluff is just a heap of earth piled
up on the bank when the canal was dug. St.-Eloi, which
the Germans still speak of as a village, has for years been
nothing but a name and a muck-heap and linked pits made
by big shell-bursts.

One of the enemy's most desperate efforts was against
the French in the village of Locre, north of Dranoutre,
and below the old hill, of the Scherpenberg, where in days
gone by distinguished visitors have stood to watch our

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 359

shelling of Wytschaete, so that the wife of the miller, who
was a chatty soul, had illustrious acquaintances, including
kings and princes.

Yesterday that hill was under intense fire, as for some
days previously, when some friends of mine whom I met
there last had very lucky and sensational escapes. When
the Germans advanced through a gap at Dranoutre the
French had terrible fighting in Locre, during which they
inflicted frightful losses on the enemy. Before the assault
on this village the enemy overwhelmed it with a bombard-
ment and destroyed many houses which were still standing,
though more than a week ago the streets were burning,
as I saw them at the same time as Bailleul was in flames.
German storm troops made three violent attacks on Locre,
which were flung back by the French with heavy casualties
among the enemy, and it was only at the fourth attempt,
with fresh reserves, that they were able to enter the ruins
of the village, from which the French then fell back in
order to reorganize for the counter-attack. This they
launched to-day at an early hour, and now Locre is in their
hands, after close fighting in which they slew numbers of
the enemy.

After their success on Thursday, when they captured
Kemmel, the Germans have made little progress, and though
there was fierce fighting all day yesterday they failed to
gain their objectives, and were raked by fire hour after
hour, so that a large number of their dead lie on the field
of battle. At four in the afternoon they engaged in a
fresh assault upon our positions near Ridge Wood, to which
we had fallen back, but English and Scottish troops of the
2 ist, 25th, and 9th Divisions repulsed them and shattered
their waves. It was a bad day for them, because of these
great losses. We have broken the fighting quality of some
of the enemy's most renowned regiments, so that they must
be taken out and reorganized before they can come into
battle again.

360 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Sunday
There was no general action in Flanders yesterday, and
to-day so far there is no extended battle, but the enemy has
been engaging some of our outpost lines, and there has been
local fighting of a severe nature against the French troops
around Locre and ours round Vormezeele, which is a well-
known halting place south of Ypres, and in the old days
the ultimate spot to which our transport could go without
certain destruction. Both these places have changed hands
several times during the past two or three days, but Locre
now seems to be with the French again.

The Buffs and Berkshires fought hard to hold the Bluff,
while between Vierstraat and Ridge Wood a gallant de-
fence has been made by Scottish Rifles and South Africans
and other troops against repeated German attacks.

All the roads and camps around Ypres are under heavy
harassing fire once more, and Ypres itself is being savagely
bombarded by high-explosive and gas shells, so that after
months of respite those poor ruins are again under that
black spell which makes them the most sinister place in the
world. "Suicide Corner" has come into its own again,
and old unhealthy plague spots up by the canal are under
fire. The enemy's guns are reaching out to fields and vil-
lages hitherto untouched by fire, and these harassing shots,
intended perhaps to catch the traffic on the roads or sol-
diers' camps, often serve the enemy no more than by the
death of innocent women and children. A day or two ago
a monstrous shell fell just outside a little Flemish cottage,
tucked away in an angle of the road, which I often pass, and
scooped out a deep pit in the garden without even scarring
the cottage walls. But two children were playing in the
garden, and they were laid dead beside the flower bed.

Along the line the enemy's losses in this continual fight-
ing have been severe, and we have been able to get the
actual figures of some of their casualties, which are typical
of the more general effect of our fire.

One company of the 7th German Division, which fought

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 361

at St.-Eloi on Friday, has only forty men remaining out
of its full strength of 120. The 4th Ersatz Division has
lost most heavily, and a prisoner of the 279th Pioneer
Company, which relieved the 360th Regiment of that divi-
sion, says that the average company strength was fifteen.
An entire regimental staff was killed by a direct hit of one
of our shells on their headquarters dug-out near Cantieux.
The same thing has happened to the battalion headquarters
of the 223rd Regiment, which is now in a state of low
moral, having been fearfully cut up. The 1st Guards
Reserve Regiment, of the 1st Guards Division, which was
much weakened in the fighting on the Somme, and was
afterwards sent to La Bassee, lost thirty-six officers, includ-
ing the regimental commander and one battalion com-
mander.

These losses are affecting inevitably the outlook of the
German troops on the prospects of their continued offensive.
Prisoners from divisions which have suffered most, con-
fess that they have no further enthusiasm for fighting,
and their regiments can only be made to attack by stern
discipline and the knowledge that they must fight on or be
shot for desertion.

On the other hand, the best German troops, especially
those now attacking us in Flanders, like the Alpine Corps
and the nth Bavarian Division, are elated and full of
warlike spirit, and even their prisoners profess to believe
that they are winning the war, and will have a German
peace before the year is out. The enemy's state of mind
is largely dependent on shell-fire. Fresh divisions newly
brought up are proud and optimistic and fierce in attack,
but after two or three days' hammering by our great gun-
fire their optimism falls from them, and they become
gloomy prophets and the horror of war closes down on
them. Most of their gaps due to casualties are being filled
up by the 19 19 class. These young boys are unable, so
far, to bear the strain of bombardments, and they break
very easily under their terror and shock.

362 THE WAY TO VICTORY

Apart from the righting in Flanders there was an im-
portant little action on Friday at Givenchy, where some of
our troops made an attack in the afternoon on a 700 yards'
line of old craters formerly in our front line, east and
north-east of Givenchy village. German possession of these
pits is annoying to our men, because the enemy has observa-
tion of our positions from crater lips and snipes us with
rifle and indirect machine-gun fire. The bottoms of the
pits are dry, and although the enemy has to approach them
overland, through boggy places, he has good cover and
room for assembly when he gets into them and into the old
mining galleries which lead from them. Our men, on
Thursday night, had already raided the German trenches
south of Givenchy village, and under protection of the bar-
rage killed a number of the enemy and brought back prison-
ers. On Friday our troops captured the craters after hard
fighting, and sent back fifty prisoners, mostly wounded;
but the 1st Guards' Division counter-attacked immediately
and there was severe fighting until darkness, when our men
withdrew, after smashing up the German defensive system.

The artillery on both sides is bombarding heavily in this
sector, and our guns have inflicted terrible casualties by fire
on German troops and transport behind their lines.

Meanwhile the storm clouds of battle are gathering stead-
ily in Flanders, rather than on these southern sectors, and
it is there in my opinion that other great actions may be
expected. The French are with us there in strength, and
the appearance of these blue-coats, older on the average
than our boys, harder-looking because of their moustaches
and their more solid figures, imperturbable under the
harassing fire that is being flung about the roads and fields,
continues our confidence that we shall break the enemy
yet. I have been to-day and yesterday among these French
troops, and have seen, or fancied I saw, upon the roads
old friends of mine, or the spirit of those old friends, the
gallant D'Artagnan and the elegant Aramis, and the noble
Athos and Porthos, who loved good fighting and good

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 363

wine, for the old types of France are here among our
khaki lads, the old gallantry of a fighting race, the senti-
ment and the soul of France.

Many of these men are dirty and dusty after long forced
marches, but one sees fine gentlemen among them, unshaven
but with a beautiful courtesy, and the true descendants of
such men as Le Balaf re, whom Quentin Durward knew, and
of Bertrand du Guesclin, who was sans peur et sans
reproche.

April 26
It was not pleasant in Flanders this morning. I went up
there, after yesterday on the Somme, to get details of the
French and British fighting round Kemmel, and I am
bound to say that though I have seen Flanders in every kind
of foul weather I have never seen it more sinister-looking,
more utterly evil in atmosphere and spiritual effect, than
it was to-day. Thick wet fog enveloped all the flat fields
like the London "particular" at its worst, and French and
British columns, with their transport and guns, moved
through it like ghosts in shadow- world.

On to the Mont des Cats, that high hill on our side of
Kemmel, upon which and round which by Boeschepe and
Dickebusch and Godewaersvelde and Westoutre — strange
names to you, but as familiar as Clapham Junction or Peck-
ham Rye or the Old Kent Road to all our soldiers out here
— the enemy has been scattering heavy shells and flinging
harassing fire. Over all their fields was wreathed round
with clouds of fog, through which the great old monastery
where Trappist monks used to live in silence before the
tumult of war surrounded them in the autumn of the first
year of war, loomed vaguely like a mediaeval castle. Roads
down which we used to go with an admirable sense of
safety, even when the Ypres salient was full of menace —
alas, the menace has come again — bore signs to-day of re-
cent and horrid happenings. Little wooden houses built by
refugees from Ypres after the day of terror there in April

364 THE WAY TO VICTORY

191 5, and filled wit^h stores which our troops used to buy
on the way past had been knocked to matchwood by shell-
fire, and all about them were deep shell-holes newly made,
with that beastly freshness which warns one that others
may come. All the fields for miles around were punctured
by pits made by German shells. It was yesterday that the
enemy's gunners flung about most of these shells. They
had a kind of devil's orgy of shelling, and scattered high
explosives any old where without aim or object except that
of harassing the whole region. They turned long-range
guns on to villages far behind the lines to catch an old
woman or two or smash up an infants' school. They fired
off the map at poor old Poperinghe again — "Pop," as we
call it by long familiarity, with its tall spired church and
Grande Place and narrow streets — and they put high ex-
plosives into Westoutre and made targets of "Bosheep"
and "Gerty Wears Velvet," which, by those who can pro-
nounce them, are called Boeschepe and Godewaersvelde.

All this was just the gentle embroidery of the decorative
scheme of death which had been planned for the central
plan round Kemmel Hill. Kemmel Hill was held by the
French, as I have previously told — those gallant men who
came up so quickly to our relief when we needed them, and
took their places in the line without delay after long
marches. On the left of them yesterday were Scottish
and English battalions. After several attempts against
Kemmel, frustrated, as I recorded at the time, the enemy
went all out yesterday to capture this position. Four divi-
sions at least, including the Alpine Corps, the nth Bava-
rians, the 56th, and 170th, were moved against Kemmel in
the early morning fog after a tremendous bombardment
of the Franco-British positions. It was a bombardment
that began before the first glimmer of dawn, like one of
those which we used to arrange in the days of our great
Flanders battles last year. It came down swamping Kem-
mel Hill, so that it was like one volcano and stretching away

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 365

on to our lines on the left of the French by Maedelstede
Farm and Grand Bois down to Vierstraat.

Then German infantry attacked in depth battalion behind
battalion, division behind division, and their mountain
troops, of the Alpine Corps and Jaegers and Bavarians,
came on first in the assault of Kemmel Hill, which is not
much more than a hillock, though it looms large in Flan-
ders and in this war.

The French had suffered a terrible ordeal of fire, and the
main thrust of the German strength was against them.
The enemy struck in two directions to encircle the hill and
village of Kemmel, one arrow-head striking to Dranoutre
and the other at the point of the junction between the
French and British northwards. In each case, favoured
by fog and the effect of their gun-fire, they were able to
drive in a wedge, which they pushed forward until they
had caused gaps. The French on Kemmel Hill became
isolated, and there was a gulf between us and the French,
and between the French left and right. On the hill the
French garrison fought with splendid heroism. These men,
when quite surrounded, would not yield, but served their
machine-guns and rifles for many hours, determined to
hold the position at all costs and to the death. Small
parties of them on the west of the hill held out until mid-
day or beyond, according to reports of our airmen, who flew
low over them ; but by nine o'clock in the morning, owing
to gaps made by the enemy, the main French line was
compelled to draw back from Kemmel. They inflicted
severe losses on the enemy as they fell back, and thwarted
his efforts to break their line on new defensive positions.

Meanwhile a body of our Scottish troops of the 9th
Division were seriously involved. Some of their officers
whom I saw to-day tell me that the fog was so thick — as on
March 21 — that after a terrific bombardment the first thing
known at some points a little way behind the line was when
the Germans were all round them.

One officer I know was sleeping after an all-night vigil,

366 THE WAY TO VICTORY

when he heard German voices and rifle shots, and jumped
out of his dug-out to see the Germans on the side of a little
stream, only a few yards away. He was on the same side
of this brook, and they could have grabbed him by one
pounce, but he leapt across the stream, and by some wonder-
ful luck escaped their sniping shots and got away. Royal
Scots and Black Watch fought hard, and did not yield
ground until the price had been paid for it. The enemy
seems to have paid his usual price, which is not cheap. A
machine-gun officer whom I know well tells me that one
section fired i ioo rounds at massed bodies of Germans who
were checked against our wire, and they fell in heaps.
This friend of mine himself had fearful experiences yester-
day after many heroic days before, but his great grief
is that his horse, which he has had out in this war since
19 14, was killed by a shell.

The Camerons fought like tigers yesterday. For some
little time they had not come in actual touch with the
enemy, but yesterday they had this chance, and made the
most of it. They were heavily attacked in the morning
up in the neighbourhood of the Damstrasse — that street
of concrete shelters which I described last year, when we
captured it in the battles of Flanders. From eleven o'clock
in the morning until half -past five in the evening they
kept this position, killing the enemy waves every time they
tried to advance. It was decided to withdraw our line to
Vierstraat, and orders were sent up to the Camerons to
conform to this, but the message did not reach them for
some time, and they still went on fighting for three hours
more, or at least until after eight o'clock, when they fell
back to join up with the rest of the line. All the afternoon
and evening the enemy endeavoured to smash through the
line established by Vierstraat to Beaver Corner, but Scots
and English repelled him with heavy losses, and the Black
Watch made a fierce counter-attack, in which they took
fifty-six prisoners.

A combined counter-attack of French and British troops

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 367

was made this morning when English battalions advanced
from the north, and after gallant efforts gained an entry
into Kemmel village, and sent back a considerable number
of prisoners, whom I met this morning on their way back.
They were a good-looking body of troops, some of them
very tall men and belonging to picked regiments of Alpine
and Bavarian divisions. But they had a worn and haggard
look, and many of them marched as though dazed by their
day and night of fighting. Unfortunately our battalions
of the 25th Division who entered Kemmel village came un-
der wicked machine-gun fire, and could not maintain their
hold on the recaptured ground, though they did not lose
all of it, and I believe they are still further than their
original line last night. The French on our right were
unable to make substantial progress. This situation in
Flanders is still serious, and the enemy may endeavour to
exploit his advance at Kemmel by a great concentration of
strength and more violent attacks. But the French Army,
as well as ours, is now barring his way, and all our men
have intense confidence in the superb regiments of France
who are now fighting with us. I saw thousands of them
to-day in the fields and farms and village^, and the spirit
of these sturdy men seemed to disperse some of the gloomy
fog about them and uplift one's heart. For they have the
look of great soldiers, hard and fined down by these years
of war, and they are inspired by a most grim resolve. The
people of Northern France, who have not seen much of
their men for three years, greet them with cries of Bonne
chance! and wave their hands to them from cottage doors.

And now I must add a few words about the situation
down south at Villers-Bretonneux, which I described yes-
terday at some length. I told how pockets of German
machine-gunners were still fighting in that village. Last
night these were all routed out, and all the village is now
in our hands, and our Australian troops have joined up the
gap which existed for a time between them.

There is no doubt that I under-estimated the losses of the

368 THE WAY TO VICTORY

enemy yesterday. The Australians say they have never
seen so many German dead, except at Polygon Wood,
where there was a massacre of the enemy. Our light
Tanks, which got among two battalions near Cachy, slaugh-
tered whole companies as though they were Juggernauts,
sweeping the enemy with fire before they could attempt to
disperse, and trampling them down. It was a ghastly
business, and these Tanks when they came back had to be
cleansed of their blood. The Tanks employed by the
enemy yesterday are heavier than ours, and, according to
Australians, seem to be about 36 feet long, 12 feet high,
and 12 feet broad, with a central turret. Their caterpillar
tracks pass round several pairs of wheels, and they look
like enormous turtles or inverted basins. But they are
very slow. One of them bore on its steel shield the emblem
of the skull and crossbones, and another carried the name
of Cyclops. They are armed with a small gun, about 2-
inch calibre, and some six machine-guns. They seem to
have been handled by scratch crews, who had not been
trained with them, and owing to the secrecy with which
these Tanks were enveloped, no German infantry had seen
one of them before, and were untrained in fighting with
them. Two of them fled at once when encountered by
ours, but our troops were unable to get possession of them.
Many of the prisoners speak with disgust of their com-
mand in ordering the attack on Villers-Bretonneux without
sufficient artillery support, and they say they suffered
hideously from gas, with which we soaked the village after
their capture of it. They were utterly surprised by our
counter-attack, and some of them were got in cellars, while
still ignorant of their change of fortune. The most intel-
ligent of these prisoners all show signs of uneasiness about
the future of the German offensive, and do not disguise
that, in spite of the gain of ground, they are uncertain of
ultimate victory, and speak like men who see some dark
omens ahead. They are puzzled by the failure of the
U-boat war to stop American transports, and when asked

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 369

why that was so, said, very simply, 'That is exactly what
we want to know." There were other things they wanted
to know, and because they do not know they have black
forebodings.

April 29
It becomes clearer every hour that the enemy has suffered
a disastrous defeat to-day. Attack after attack has been
smashed up by our artillery and infantry of the 21st, 25th,
and 49th Divisions, and he has not made a foot of ground
on the British front.

The Border Regiment of the 25th Division this morning
repulsed four heavy assaults on the Kemmel — La-Clytte
road, where there was extremely hard fighting, and de-
stroyed the enemy each time. One of the enemy's main
thrusts was between the Scherpenberg and Mont Rouge,
where they made a wedge for a time and captured the
cross-roads, and it was here that a gallant French counter-
attack swept them back.

We had no more than a post or two in Voormezeele this
morning, and the enemy was there in greater strength and
sent his storm troops through this place, but was never able
to advance against the fire of our English battalions. His
losses began yesterday when his troops were seen massing
on the road between Zillebeke and Ypres in dense fog,
through which he attempted to make a surprise attack.
This was observed by our low-flying planes, and his as-
sembly was shattered by our gun-fire. After fierce shelling
all night, so tremendous along the whole northern front
that the countryside was shaken by its tumult, German
troops again assembled in the early morning mist, but were
caught once more in our bombardment. At three o'clock
a tremendous barrage was flung down by German gunners
from Ypres to Bailleul, and later they began the battle by
launching the first attack between Zillebeke Lake and
Meteren. South of Ypres they crossed the Yser Canal
by Lock 8 near Voormezeele, which was their direction

370 THE WAY TO VICTORY

of attack againsi. us, while they tried to drive up past
Locre against the French on the three hills.

Our successful defence has made the day most bloody
for many German regiments.

There was violent and widespread gun-fire all last night
from the enemy's batteries, from the Belgian front down
through Flanders to the districts about Bethune, and this
morning the German bombardment intensified to heights
of fury all round Ypres, and upon our lines near Voor-
mezeele and Vierstraat, and against the French front west
of Kemmel Hill to the country south of Dranoutre, where
British troops join them again. Then began, at about six
o'clock this morning, that attack which was the inevitable
plan of General Sixt von Armin after the capture of Kem-
mel Hill That is, an attempt in strong force to gain the
chain of hillocks running westwards below Ypres and
Poperinghe, and known to all of us as familiar land-
marks— the Scherpenberg, Mont Rouge, and Mont Noir.

These hills, forming the Central Keep as it were in our
defensive lines south of Ypres, are held by the French, and
are of great tactical importance at the present moment, so
that the enemy covets them and is ready to sacrifice thou-
sands of men to get them. In order to turn them if frontal
attacks failed against the French, German storm troops —
they are now called grosskampf, or great offensive troops
— were to break the British lines on the French left be-
tween Locre and Voormezeele, and on the French right
near Merris and Meteren. That obviously was the inten-
tion of the German High Command this morning, judg-
ing from their direction of assault. So far they have
failed utterly. They have failed up to this afternoon to
break or bend the British wings on the French centre,
and they have failed to capture the hills or any one of them
defended by French divisions. They have attacked again
and again since this morning's dawn, heavy forces of Ger-
man infantry being sent forward after their first waves
against the Scherpenberg and Voormezeele, which lies to

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 371

the east of Dickebusch Lake, but these men have been
slaughtered by French and British fire, and have made no
important progress at any point.

For a time the situation seemed critical at one or two
points, and it was reported that the Germans had been seen
storming the slopes of Mont Rouge and Mont Noir, but one
of our airmen flew over those hills at 200 feet above their
crests and could see no German infantry near them.

Round about Voormezeele North Country and other
English battalions of the 49th Division, which had been
fighting marvellously for many days in the attacks on
Neuve Eglise, had to sustain determined and furious efforts
of Alpine and Bavarian troops to drive through them by
weight of numbers after hours of intense bombardment,
but our men held their ground and inflicted severe punish-
ment upon the enemy. All through the day the German
losses have been heavy under field-gun and machine-gun
fire, and our batteries alongside the French 75 's swept
down the enemy's advancing waves and his assemblies in
support at short range. There is no doubt that the French
guarding the three hills have fought with extreme valour
and skill. For a brief period the Germans were apparently
able to draw near and take some ground near Locre, but
an immediate counter-attack was organized by the French
general, and the line of French troops swung forward and
swept the enemy back. Further attacks by the Germans
north of Ypres and on the Belgian front was repulsed easily,
and again the enemy lost many men. The battle continues,
but the first phase of it has been decided in our favour, and
it has been another day of sacrifice for the German regi-
ments, who one by one, as they come up fresh to reinforce
their battle-line, lose a high percentage of their strength in
this continuing slaughter.

The German High Command still has many divisions
untouched, but their turn will come, and if, as to-day, they
are spent without great gain, the enemy's plans of a decisive
victory will be thwarted for ever. There is a limit even to

372 THE WAY TO VICTORY

German man-power, and surely to God their people will tire
of making these fields of France and Flanders the grave-
yard of their youth. This frenzy must pass from them and
from our stricken world when the truth comes home to
them at last.

April 30
Good news travels as fast as bad out here, and yesterday
evening, as well as this morning, in Flanders there were
general expressions of gladness behind the lines because the
enemy's fierce attacks had been utterly crushed.

"The enemy took the knock yesterday," said a staff
officer, who had been working all that day and most of the
night, but was in high spirits this morning.

"Some of his best divisions," said another, "have got
badly chipped against a hard wall," and then he said, with
a queer laugh, "the dirty dogs."

Good words were said about our own divisions who bore
the brunt of this fighting — the 21st, the 49th, and the 25th
— all of whom have had much hard work of late, and have
been sticking it out in one battle after another.

There are Northumberland and other troops in the 21st
Division, and the 49th Division contains mostly Yorkshire
troops, who have done some stubborn fighting since April
9, and helped to retake Neuve Eglise no fewer than four
times in the bitter struggle for that place on the east side
of Bailleul.

The 25th Division are the men who fought grim rear-
guard actions when the enemy broke through the Portu-
guese, and with our 50th Division and others, held on to the
last possible hours on the Lys and by Neuf Berquin and up
by Steenwerck, when the enemy came driving ahead in his
first bull rush for Armentieres and Bailleul.

Many civilians as well as soldiers had heard the news
last night, and it meant much to them — the difference be-
tween quick flight from places menaced by any new Ger-
man advance and a chance of staying in their homes, the

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 373

difference between a long trek to an unknown country,
leaving all their little property behind them, and the hope,
at least, of clinging on to their farms and homesteads on
the edge of war. ... I walked out last evening to a place
from which one can see the long sweep of our Flemish
battlefields round Ypres to Bailleul. There below me were
outspread all the long, straight roads with avenues of
poplars which I have been travelling these three and a half
years past, and the neat fields of Flanders, with red-tiled
cottages and church spires and orchards white with blos-
som, and old windmills, whose sails have turned to the
wind of many centuries.

This countryside was designed for peace and the sowing
and reaping of grain, but since the war began the horizon
has been on fire beyond it, and last night this shell-fire was
bursting close, in fields untouched before by any steel un-
kinder than the plough, and along roads which until a week
or two ago were safe highways this side of Poperinghe
and Ypres.

A Flemish woman stood by her cottage wall staring out
upon the scene as though searching for any sign which
might give her hope. Her eyes were sombre, and she had
such a tragic look that she seemed to me a typical figure
of Flemish womanhood looking out towards the battle-line
which has drawn closer to their lives, so that many of them
have been caught up in it or have fled from its engulfing
terror.

Down below her, a few hundred yards away, was the
ruin of a small house smashed to matchwood the night
before. German shells were bursting with heavy clump-
ing noises in hamlets near by, and our guns in the fields
below were flashing and winking through the evening mists,
and all the sky caught up the thunderous rumblings of great
drumfire away beyond the Mont des Cats and the Scher-
penberg.

"Have the Germans still possession of Mont Kemmel?"
asked the peasant woman, and I said, "Yes, but they have

374 THE WAY TO VICTORY

been defeated to-day." "That is good news," she said.
"Perhaps we shall be able to stay here after all. They
tell me the French have driven them out of Locre again."

In England this news will seem good. People will say,
"We seem to have done well yesterday." But out here it
means more than that to people whose lives and homes are
threatened by any German advance. To them every act in
this frightful drama is enormously significant, and every
place which strangers puzzle out on the map is to them a
village where they lived as children, where their sisters
or children dwell or where they have left all their proper-
ties. I write these things because they humanize map
names, and show how the valour of men is the safeguard
of the folk on the edge of the fighting-fields. It was the
valour of Frenchmen as well as Englishmen which yester-
day inflicted defeat upon many German divisions, and the
Allies fought side by side, and their batteries fired from
the same fields, and their wounded came back along the
same roads, and khaki and blue lay out upon the same
brown earth.

I have already given an outline of yesterday's battle,
how, after a colossal bombardment, the German attack
begun early in the morning from north of Ypres to the
south of Voormezeele, where English battalions held the
lines, and from La-Clytte past the three hills — the Scher-
penberg, Mont Rouge, and Mont Noir — which French
troops held, to the north of Meteren, where the English
joined them again; how the English lines held firm against
desperate assaults until late in the evening; and how the
enemy made a great thrust against the French, driving in
for a time between the Scherpenberg and Mont Noir until
flung back by the French counter-attack.

It was here, by Hyde Park Corner, that a very gallant
action was done by an officer of a French regiment. The
enemy had driven in a wedge at ten minutes past ten, and
was on the southern slopes of Scherpenberg, where small
parties of Germans were endeavouring to secure a footing.

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 375

By 12.30 in the afternoon the French line was still intact
northwards, but had slightly withdrawn towards Scherpen-
berg and Mont Rouge when the situation was dangerous
though not critical.

A counter-attack was being prepared by the French Head-
quarters Staff, but was unnecessary, owing to the fine
initiative of regimental officers who realized the position
locally and dealt with it without waiting for supports.
One of them gathered some of his men together, and at
about 5.30 in the afternoon said, "Eh, bien, mes enfants,
suivez moi!" and led these little groups of "Poilus" in a
quick attack against the German machine-guns and outposts
holding Hyde Park Corner. They went forward with
fixed bayonets, their steel helmets thrust back from their
foreheads, and hoarse cheers and shouts, following the
officer who led them. At Hyde Park Corner many Ger-
mans fell, and the rest fled.

An action as gallant as this, very like it in idea and
execution, was done by another French officer with a group
of picked men in Locre. That village, where I have been
held up scores of times in the traffic which used to surge
round the corners by the church and our officers' club and
divisional headquarters, was yesterday a charred ruin, with
shell-broken streets littered with dead, in which German
machine-gunners hid and kept up a chattering fire, very
deadly to face by men fighting into the village.

During the past week Locre has changed hands several
times, and yesterday at least four times again. The French
infantry were forced to retire under pressure of the Ger-
man assaults, but each time they came back again with
grim determination to remain and rout their enemy out.
All day there was this struggle, small bodies of men with
machine-guns and rifles fighting against each other under
the cover of walls and barricades of timber. In the eve-
ning the enemy was in possession again, but did not have
lodgings for the night there.

A French officer, like that other one at Hyde Park Cor-

376 THE WAY TO VICTORY

ner, gathered some hard fellows about him, and said,
"Now let us take back Locre before it is too dark." They
worked their way through the village right to the other
side of it, kiKing some of the enemy and taking some
prisoners, and then, just to show that Locre was very
much theirs, walked down the road to Dranoutre, and
only stopped when they met their own barrage-line of
bursting shells.

In the night the French, who had now regained all the
ground that had been temporarily in the enemy's hands,
made a general counter-attack and succeeded in advancing
their line to a depth of about 1500 yards beyond the line
of the three hills, which thereby are made more secure
against future assaults.

Meanwhile throughout the day English battalions had
been sustaining heavy asaults and breaking the enemy
against their front. The Leicesters especially, with the
Lincolns and Yorks of the 21st Division, had fierce fighting
about Voormezeele, where, as I told yesterday, the enemy
was in the centre of the village.

German storm troops advanced against our men here and
along other parts of the line with fixed bayonets, but in
most places, except at Voormezeele, where there was close
fighting, they were mown down by Lewis gun-fire before
they could get near. Line after line of them came on, but
lost heavily and fell back.

Over the ground east of Dickebusch Lake the West
Yorks and the Yorks and Lanes of the 49th Division saw
these groups of field-grey men advancing upon them and
the glint of their bayonets, wet in the morning mist, and
swept them with bullets from Lewis guns and rifles until
many bodies were lying out there on the mud flats in the
old Ypres salient.

The most determined assaults were concentrated upon
the 25th Division, but it held firm and would not budge,
though the men had been under fearful fire in the night

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 377

bombardment, and their machine-gunners kept their trig-
gers pressed, and bullets played upon the advancing Ger-
mans like a garden hose. The troops in the whole division
yielded not a yard of ground, and they hold that they killed
as many Germans as any battalions in this battle, which
was a black day for Germany.

More than ten German divisions, probably thirteen, seem
to have been engaged in this attempt to smash our lines and
encircle the three hills. They included some of the enemy's
finest divisions, so that they have lost quality as well as
quantity in this futile sacrifice of man-power — man-power
which seems to mean nothing in flesh and blood and heart
and soul to men like Ludendorff, but is treated as material
force, like guns and ammunition, and used as cannon-
fodder.

Some of our brigades saw the German Red Cross at work
during the day coming close behind the lines with their
wagons flying the burning emblem of love — a frightful
irony on the field of battle, except for the devotion of the
men who labour under this sign of truce — and with crowds
of stretcher-bearers who went a-gleaning on those muddy
fields. They had a great harvest of wounded.

To-day again I have been among thousands of French
soldiers, and it is splendid to see them because of their fine
bearing. They are men in the prime of life, not so young
as some of ours, and with a graver look than one sees on
our boys' faces when they have not yet reached the zone
of fire. They are men who have seen all that war means
during these years of agony and hope and boredom and
death. They have no illusions. They stare into the face
of truth unflinchingly and shrug their shoulders at its worst
menace, and still have faith in victory. So I read them,
if any man may read, the thoughts that lie behind those
bronzed faces with dark eyes and upturned moustaches,
under the blue painted helmets or black tarn o' shanter.
They are not gay or boisterous in their humour, and they

378 THE WAY TO VICTORY

do not sing like our men as they march, but they seem to
have been born to this war, and its life is their life, and
they are professionals.

There are wonderful pictures as they pass everywhere,
and if I were an artist instead of a writing man my fingers
would itch for pencil or brush to draw these groups, these
columns on the march, these splendid types of France.
Some of their horses are lean and long-tailed like those in
the battle pictures of Detaille, and many of their transport
wagons are spider-wheeled below their blue boards, and
frail compared with our own lorries. The gunners who
ride behind their batteries thrust their hands deep into the
pockets of their long blue overcoats, and have their rifles
slung behind their backs, and on the gun-limbers behind
heavy howitzers, or long-barrelled high-velocity fellows, or
the dainty little soixante-quinze, which kills men delicately
and with artistry, three fellows sit hunched together, with
their heads nodding after an all-night march, or staring
with curious eyes at our transport and traffic. Across the
guns themselves men sit astraddle, and I saw one fellow
to-day, a handsome fellow with an actor's face, reading
a book of poetry in this position, oblivious of the world
of fact about him. In any marching column or in any
field where French troops are halted there is always a
wagon with wine barrels, for the "Poilu" has a daily ration
of wine, and his spirits rise at the journey's end when he
washes down his parched and dusty throat with a drop of
"Pinard," as he calls it in his slang. The tricolour passes
along the roads of France and Flanders, and French
trumpets ring out across the flat fields below the Scherpen-
berg, and all the spirit of French fighting men, who have
proved themselves great soldiers in this war, as for a
thousand years of history, is mingled with our own bat-
talions, and our men exchange Virginia cigarettes for
Caporals. Together yesterday they gave the German army
a hard knock.

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 379

May i
The Germans are quiet in their lines since they were re-
pulsed so utterly in their attacks against the Scherpenberg
and our lines round Ypres. Even their guns were not very
active last night and to-day. They are burying their dead
and getting back their wounded, and taking broken divi-
sions out of the line to replace them with fresh troops for
another battle. I believe that will happen, because now
that the enemy has Kemmel Hill his temptation to seize
the three hills below is predominant, and there is no doubt
that he will again risk the loss of many men to gain these
positions. From the political point of view Ypres is also
a lure to him, and there would be a great blowing of
trumpets in Germany if their troops could capture that city
of the salient, which, as a name and a ruin, is a great shrine
of the British Army in this war. Now that the French
are with us to strengthen our own defensive power, which
has sustained such furious onslaughts by over ioo German
divisions since six weeks ago, the next battle in Flanders
may not give the enemy any further ground than the day
before yesterday, which was nothing at all, and it is certain
anyhow that not a yard of it will be yielded until the next
waves of German soldiers have paid great sums of life.

In the last battle two additional divisions have now been
identified as having been put in against the British front in
Flanders, one being the 117th near Voormezeele, and the
other the 3rd Guards Division, including the Maikaefer,
or Cockchafers, whom Welsh regiments shattered at Pil-
kem last year, and who have fought against us in the Cam-
brai salient. Last night when, no doubt, German reliefs
were in progress, our guns turned loose with shrapnel
and high explosives upon the transport, and troops crowd-
ing the track from Vierstraat to Wytschaete, and this
morning the enemy had more dead to bury. So the slaugh-
ter goes on.

During a rare day without great news there is an op-
portunity of writing a few words about some of our bat-

380 THE WAY TO VICTORY

talions who in the earlier fighting during these recent bat-
tles were wonderful in courage and endurance and self-
sacrifice, but have not yet appeared in our narratives, be-
cause, for the time, it was inadvisable to mention their
presence in our battle-line. They are battalions of the
Guards. There is no need for secrecy now because the
enemy met them at close quarters, and knows how these
men fought — sometimes in small bodies almost to the last
man.

The recent history of the Guards begins with the Battle
of Arras on March 28, when the 56th (London) Division
and the 15th (Scottish), and the grand old 3rd Division
made such a wonderful stand against one of the biggest
efforts of the enemy.

On the 28th and the 30th the Guards were heavily at-
tacked, and beat off the enemy's storm troops with exceed-
ingly great losses to them, the Grenadiers making a counter-
attack near Boileux St.-Marc with fixed bayonets, flinging
the enemy back from the ground they had gained. But
later than that battalions of Guards have been fighting in
the North, around the Forest of Nieppe and between
Lepinette and Vieux Berquin. That was from April 11
to 14, after the Germans had broken through the Portu-
guese line and, with the full weight of their forces, en-
deavoured to widen the gap — did, indeed, widen the gap,
pushing up between Armentieres and Merville by gaining
the crossings of the Lys. Grenadier, Irish, and Cold-
stream Guards were sent forward along the Hazebrouck-
Estaires road when the situation was at its worst, when the
men of our 15th Division and other units had fought
themselves out in continual rear-guard and holding actions,
so that some of those still in the line could hardly walk or
stand, and when it was utterly necessary to keep the Ger-
mans in check until a body of Australian troops had time
to arrive. The Guards were asked to hold back the enemy
until those Australians came, and to fight at all costs for
forty-eight hours against the German tide of men and guns

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 381

which was attempting to flow round our other hard-pressed
men. And that is what the Guards did. Fighting in
separate bodies, with the enemy pressing in on both flanks,
greatly outnumbered, they beat back attack after attack
and gained precious hours — vital hours — by the most noble
self-sacrifice. A party of Grenadiers were so closely sur-
rounded that their officer sent back a message, saying,
"My men are standing back to back shooting on all sides."
The Germans swung round them, circling them with
machine-guns and rifles, and pouring fire into them until
only eighteen men were left. Those eighteen, standing
among their wounded and their dead, did not surrender.
The Army wanted forty-eight hours. They fixed bayonets
and went out against the enemy and drove through him.
A wounded corporal of the Grenadiers who afterwards got
back to our lines lay in a ditch, and the last he saw of his
comrades was when fourteen men of them were still fight-
ing in a swarm of Germans.

The Coldstream Guards were surrounded in the same
way, and fought in the same way. The Army had asked
for forty-eight hours until the Australians could come,
and many of the Coldstreamers eked out the time with their
lives. The enemy filtered in on their flanks, came crawling
round them with machine-guns, sniped them from short
range, raked them from ditches and upheaved earth. The
Coldstream Guards had to fall back, but they fought back
in small groups, facing all ways, making gaps in the enemy
ranks, not firing wildly, but using every round of small-
arms ammunition to keep a German back and gain a little
more time. One private of the Coldstreamers remained
in an outpost until every one of his comrades was dead or
wounded, and for twenty minutes after that — twenty
minutes of those forty-eight hours — kept the Germans
back with his rifle until he was killed by a bomb. Forty-
eight hours is a long time in a war like this. For two days
and nights the Guards stemmed the tide of the enemy's
advance.

382 THE WAY TO VICTORY

The Irish Guards, who had come up to support the
Grenadiers and Coldstreamers, tried to make a defensive
flank, but the enemy worked past their right and attacked
them on two sides. The Irish Guards were gaining time.
They knew that was all they could do — just drag out the
hours by buying each minute with their blood. One man
fell, and then another, but minutes were gained, and
quarter-hours, and hours. Small parties of them lowered
their bayonets and went out among the grey wolves, swarm-
ing round them, and killed a number of them until they also
fell. First one party and then another of these Irish
Guards made those bayonet charges against men with
machine-guns and volleys of rifle-fire. They bought time
at a high price, but they did not stint themselves nor stop
their bidding because of its costliness. The Brigade of
Guards here near Vieux Berquin held out for those forty-
eight hours, and some of them were fighting still when the
Australians arrived according to the time-table.

I have told the story briefly and baldly, though every word
I have written holds the thread of a noble and tragic
episode. One day some soldier of the Guards will write
it as he lived through it, and that saving of forty-eight
hours outside the Forest of Nieppe shall never be for-
gotten.

VII

The French in Flanders

May 3
I went yesterday among some of the French troops who
on April 29 inflicted a severe defeat on Sixt von Armin's
storm troops between Dranoutre and Locre — when our own
divisions to the north and south shared the honour of the
day with them — and before that for six days in front of
Kemmel Hill held their lines with most noble courage under
a frightful fire that hardly ever slackened when Kemmel

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 383

had been turned and captured, and these men whom I met
were almost surrounded, so that they had to fight with long
enduring devotion, with great sacrifices, to maintain their
positions.

It is a moving narrative as I heard it yesterday from
these French officers who lived through that fearful week.
The glory of the simple soldiers of France was there in
those Flemish fields, and when they were ordered to hold on
at all costs they obeyed to the death.

"We were asked to hold our line," said the colonel of one
of these French regiments. "We held it."

His hand trembled for a moment as he touched a packet
of papers, his orders during the battle, and told me how
each message there had been carried through frightful fire
by his runners, so that many of them were killed, and of his
other losses in officers and men. But then this square-
built man, with grizzled eyebrows and moustache, and
blue-grey eyes that had steady light in them, said again
"We held our line."

His regiment came up from Alsace to Flanders. They
were hardened fellows, who had been through many battles.
They were heroes of Fleury, near Verdun, when the Crown
Prince's army was broken against their defence after
desperate assaults ; and yesterday, when I saw them march-
ing through Flemish villages, I was stirred by the sight of
them because of their grim keen look. They are young
men, but veterans. War has set its seal on them as on all
men who have passed through its fire, but has not weakened
them.

On the morning of the 24th the German bombardment
was intensified and spread over a deep area, destroying
villages, tearing up roads, making black vomit of the har-
rowed fields. Dranoutre, Locre, Westoutre, and other
small towns were violently bombarded. That night the
French discovered that the Germans were preparing an at-
tack for next morning, to be preceded by a gas bombard-
ment. Officers warned all their men, and they stood on the

384 THE WAY TO VICTORY

alert, with their gas-masks, when at 3.30 in the morning
thousands of gas shells fell over them, mixed with high ex-
plosives of all calibres up to monster 12 inches, which burst
like volcanic eruptions. In the intensity of the bombard-
ment several officers who had fought at Fleury, said, "This
is the most frightful thing we have seen. Verdun was
nothing to it."

All the French troops jammed on their gas-masks —
lighter things than ours, without nose tubes or chest bag,
but very effective — and on one day they put them on fifty
times, only removing them when the wind, which was
fairly strong, blew away the poison fumes, until other
storms of shells came, and for nearly a week wearing them
constantly, sleeping in them, officers giving orders in them,
men fighting and dying in them, charging with the bayonet
in them. It was worth the trouble and the suffering, for
this French regiment, between Locre and Dranoutre, had
only twelve gas casualties.

That morning the German attack fell first on Kemmel
Hill, which they turned from the north, and two hours
later, the bombardment continuing all along the line, they
developed a strong attack against Dranoutre, in the south,
in order to take Locre, and turn the French right. Until
evening troops on Kemmel Hill, with a small body of our
own men, I am told, still held out with great devotion in
isolated positions, but by eight o'clock that morning Kem-
mel Hill was entirely cut off. This was a severe menace
to their comrades at Locre and southwards, because both
their flanks were threatened. They did heroic things to
safeguard their right and left, which again and again the
enemy tried to pass.

I have already told in a previous message how a gallant
French officer and a small company of men made a counter-
attack at Dranoutre, and held the post there against all
odds. Up by Locre the commandant of the left battalion
found machine-gun fire sweeping his left flank, and his
men had to face left to defend their line. Small parties of

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 385

Germans with machine-guns kept filtering down from the
north, and established themselves on the railway in order
to rake the French with enfilade fire. One French com-
pany, led by devoted officers, counter-attacked there five
times with the bayonet, into the sweep of those bullets, and,
by this sacrifice, saved their flank. Another company ad-
vanced to hold the hospice. There was desperate fighting
day after day, so that its ruins, if any bits of wall are left,
will be as historic as the chateau at Vermelles, or other
famous houses of the battlefields. French and Germans
took it turn and turn about, and* although the enemy sent
great numbers of men to garrison this place they were
never able to hold it long, because always some young
French lieutenant and a handful of men stormed it again,
and routed the enemy. When it was taken last, on April
29, the day of the enemy's severe defeat, the French cap-
tured 100 prisoners in cellars there, and they belonged to
fourteen battalions of four regiments of three divisions,
showing the amazing way in which the enemy's divisions
had been flung into confusion by the French fire.

"There were ten big shells a second," one of these officers
told me, "and that lasted with only two short pauses for six
days all through the battle, and other shells were un-
countable."

The enemy had brought up light artillery and trench-
mortars almost to his front lines in Dranoutre Wood and
other places, and attempted to take the French in enfilade
fire from Kemmel. But by this time many French guns
were in position reinforcing the British artillery, and on the
28th they opened up, and killed great numbers of the enemy.

Allied aviators saw long columns of Germans on the
roads by Neuve Eglise, and in Dranoutre Wood, and sig-
nalled to the guns to range on these human targets. The
guns answered. Masses of Germans were smashed by the
fire, and panic-stricken groups were seen running out of
Dranoutre Wood.

That night the Germans seemed to be relieving their

386 THE WAY TO VICTORY

troops, and again French and British guns flung shells into
them, and for the enemy it was a night of death and hor-
ror. But next day, the 29th, the enemy made reply by a
prolonged bombardment, more intense even than before,
and then attacked with new troops all along the line.

But the French also had many fresh troops in the line —
not those I met yesterday — who at two o'clock in the morn-
ing went forward into the attack and took back the vil-
lage. This defeated the enemy's plan of turning the French
left, and all through that day the enemy's desperate efforts
to break through were shattered, and that night the French
held exactly the same ground as before and had caused
enormous losses to the German divisions — at least 40 per
cent, of their strength as it is reckoned on close evidence.
That night even the German guns stopped their drumfire
as though Sixt von Armin's army was in mourning for its
dead.

The Germans have added one terror to battle which was
taught them by us in the battles of Flanders last year.
From the air they sent over swarms of low-flying aero-
planes, from 10 to a 100 yards above the ground, and their
pilots fired on the French infantry in the open with machine-
guns, and dropped heavy bombs. "I counted some seventy-
nine aeroplanes in the sky at one time over two battalion
fronts," said one of the officers whom I met yesterday, and
his friends bore out this fact. They told me all these things
frankly and simply, with fine modesty and open-heartedness.

Their great pride was in the glory of their men. They
touched the papers, which had been delivered by the run-
ners, with reverence as relics of the brave dead, and they
stood very silent when the old colonel, who was like a father
among them, took another paper out of his pocket, and
smoothed it out, and, clearing his throat a little, said, "I
had this from a young lieutenant of mine commanding a
platoon, and I would like to read it to you."

It was a message from a young French officer who with a
little party of men was isolated for two days with the

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 387

enemy all round them. For two days they kept the Ger-
mans at bay with machine-gun fire, righting north and
south, facing both ways, and he had the honour to report
— this boy of France — that he had not lost a foot of ground
nor one man as a prisoner.

'There must have been many things done like that,"
said the colonel, "but the men who did them have not come
back, and we shall never know."

On the same day as the French were holding firm between
Dranoutre and Locre, our men of the 21st, 49th, and 25th
Divisions were sustaining the same ordeal northwards be-
tween Voormezeele and Ridge Wood. I have already given
many details of this fighting, describing the colossal bom-
bardment, the attacks of the enemy in waves, and our
slaughter of his men. He was never able to get into Ridge
Wood, and on the previous night, when he tried to ad-
vance on a big scale, but was prevented by our gun-fire,
which broke up his assemblies, the South Africans attacked
and drove him back by machine-gun and rifle fire. The
Yorks and Lancashires and the Duke of Wellingtons re-
ceived the enemy with fixed bayonets, and inflicted heavy
losses.

One fine feature of this battle, which was a defeat for the
Germans, was the extraordinary gallant behaviour of some
of the men of the new drafts, who came into action for
the first time, stood the ordeal of intense shell-fire with
wonderful stoicism, and showed a gallant spirit in attack.
One party of them actually attacked as a separate unit and
did splendid work.

Saturday
How many days will there be before the next battle, now
that nearly a week has passed without German attacks?
Since that morning of April 29, when our British and
French troops staggered some of the enemy's best divi-
sions by a slaughtering fire, there has been no action but the
ceaseless action of the artillery.

388 THE WAY TO VICTORY

The lull in the big battles is only because the enemy is
reorganizing his divisions, rearranging and maintaining his
gun-power, preparing for another phase of his offensive,
which will be as formidable as the gathering of all his
forces for another supreme effort can be made.

We are not making it easy for him to get on with his
plans, and heavy rains have made his roads bad and filled
the bogs behind him. That bombardment of ours last
night, and on other nights, has beyond any question con-
fused his arrangements, with such confusion as one sees in
a neat house in Arras or Amiens when high explosives
enter in and disturb the scheme of things. From prisoners
and other sources we know something at least of the effect
of our gun-fire over there in Albert and on the Bapaume
road beyond, and up in Flanders, in old places of horror
which were our places, beyond Hell Fire Corner and
Hooge, and along duckboards down from Wytschaete and
the tracts that go past Kemmel Hill.

The enemy has many divisions both up there in the Flem-
ish fields and on the Somme, divisions in line and divisions
in reserve — divisions crowded in reserve — and there are
few roads for them down which to march, and not much
elbow room for such masses to assemble, and not much
cover in trenches or dug-outs from high explosives or
shrapnel.

So we pound them to death, many of them to death, and
many of them to stretcher cases, and reliefs coming up get
wildly mixed with divisions coming down, and at night
there is mad confusion in the ranks of marching men and
in transport columns, which gallop past dead horses and
splintered wagons and the wrecks of transport columns,
and among regimental and divisional staffs trying to keep
order in the German way when things are being smashed
into chaos, while the Red Cross convoys are overloaded
with wounded and unable to cope with all the bodies that
lie about.

I believe the German plans are what they were before

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 389

March 21, only modified by the exigencies and occasions
of the battle, but not changed in essential ideas. Their pur-
pose still remains to destroy the British Army by continual
sledge-hammer blows, to divide the French and British
Armies as much as possible by driving in a wedge in the
neighbourhood of Amiens, and with luck so to cramp us
in the north by the capture of the last remaining hills in
Flanders and by depriving us of the free use of the roads
and railways that we may have to draw back from our
northern front.

This strategy, like all good strategy, is childlike in its
simplicity. It needs no enormous brain to work it out. A
map on a school-room wall is good enough for Ludendorff
to draw out its lines. It is the men who have to take those
lines with their bodies who have the difficult task, and
those men, those German soldiers, know that every mile
of the way will be another graveyard, and that strategy so
simple as this means for them months more of sacrifice.

But they will have to do it. The German High Command
is not going to spare them. It will pour out their blood,
40 per cent, of one battalion, 60 per cent, of another, an-
nihilation if necessary, provided that in this great gamble of
history there is a chance of winning. And apparently they
still think they have that chance. Perhaps they think still,
in spite of the heavy losses which they write off, that it is
almost a certainty.

They have five months ahead of them this year, five
months of fighting weather, and they will use them in my
judgment for a series of blows interrupted only by short
periods such as that now on for reorganization and prep-
aration.

There is only one chance of avoiding these tremendous
onslaughts, though many chances, I hope and believe, of
thwarting them. It is the chance — a slender one, but not
beyond possibility — that the German people will be so hor-
rified by this spilling of their soldiers' blood in the frenzied
desire for a decisive victory that they will rise in passion

390 THE WAY TO VICTORY

against it, with cries against those who order it to go on.

Already the German people are beginning to realize that,
notwithstanding the jubilations of their newspapers, let-
ters from the Emperor to his generals, and the generals to
their Emperor, and all the stage management of victorious
drama, their losses have been frightful since March 21.

A day or two ago up in Flanders a wagon drawn by
two mules dashed into our lines. Their drivers had been
killed or scared by our harassing fire, and so these mules
came to us. In the wagon was a German mail of unopened
letters. Those letters reveal the agony, the spiritual revolt
of people who understand something of the truth and see
nothing but death in all this.

"Do you think you won't be coming on leave soon now?
[So one letter says.] It's high time you got away, for it is
past your turn. Oh! how much longer is it all going to
last? It is full time the wicked humbug of it were at an
end. In the last few days we have had news of the death
of five relatives in the big offensive. It is frightful, and
still no sign of peace. The world is full of sorrow and
misery. If only this wicked war would end — this murder
cease. A youngster from here has just been killed, and he
would have been nineteen in May. Oh, what a cost and
how much more to pay before the end !"

In another letter there is this same wail of grief:

"You can imagine that there is no rest for me in these
times, and all my thoughts are taken up by the new offen-
sive and all that it will cost. Karl has been killed. What
a shame it is, but we can do nothing to make things any
better. Peace doesn't seem to be coming along as we have
fondly hoped. All this in the West is too wicked for any-
thing, and we are full of worry and anxiety. A whole
crowd out hereabouts have had news of the death of their
men-folk. It's too awful for anything. Four years of it
now, and no sign of the end. We hope every day that it
will come to a decision, and that the English will be driven
into the North Sea, but they stand firm."

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 391

Meanwhile the war goes on and will go on. This morn-
ing early our guns doubled their usual dose of harassing
fire, and kept the enemy's roads and assembly places under
fierce bursts of shelling, so that other deaths will be noti-
fied in German villages. And the enemy's guns were very
active along our front all day yesterday in Flemish vil-
lages like Fletre and La-Motte and Hazebrouck and Vla-
mertinghe, with its skeleton church; then in the Lens area
by Gavrelle and Arleux, and further south above Albert,
along the Ancre.

Round about Locre French troops have made a few small
gains in raids and patrol actions, capturing some ruined
farms and houses and some high ground south of Koude-
kot. The gun-fire hardly ceases round about Locre itself
and about the hospice there, where, as I have described,
there was bitter fighting, so that the place was taken and
lost and retaken several times by the French with small
parties of "Poilus" led by young officers with most gallant
courage. I knew this hospice well, and it will interest
many people to be reminded that in the garden there Major
Willie Redmond was buried after the Battle of Wytschaete,
where he fell. In the garden there on the day of his
funeral there was a guard of honour of Ulster soldiers
and Nationalist soldiers, and among the generals and Staff
officers the reverend mother and her nuns to whom the
hospice belonged. They laid flowers on his grave, and
went back then into the long refectory, where Irish sol-
diers used to dine, waited upon by these good women who,
as a sign of their love for Ireland, had painted on their
walls the Irish harp, and next to it the Red Hand of Ulster
and the little shamrock, with the lily flower of France.
Redmond's grave was quiet in the garden when we went
away from it, and birds were singing in the bushes. Now
the hospice is a ruin, and the nuns have fled and the garden
has been trampled down by the feet of fighting men, and
near Redmond's grave lie other bodies of the dead.

392 THE WAY TO VICTORY

VIII '

The Falure of the German Offensive

May 6
The lull continues, and yesterday was the quietest day on
the Front, perhaps, that we have had since March 21.

I described yesterday how our intense harassing fire in
Flanders and elsewhere has caused much damage to the
enemy, and has undoubtedly interfered a good deal with his
organization behind the lines, making it difficult for him
to relieve and reorganize his divisions, to bring up his am-
munition, and to gather all the supplies he needs for the
next phase of his offensive. This destructive fire of ours is
causing the same effect down across the Somme, where the
Australians especially have during recent days made life
very wretched for the German troops.

The Australian achievement at about 2 a.m. this morn-
ing was a very daring and successful enterprise, which
must be extraordinarily annoying to the German Command
in that district. Annoying is too mild a word to use for
the German troops themselves, because for an hour or more
it must have been a time of terror for them, and many poor
wretches were killed before the light of day.

The Australians went over in no great numbers for such
a wide front of attack, which was about 2500 yards, and
without preliminary bombardment, though as soon as they
were away their guns were active neutralizing the enemy's
batteries and keeping his roads and tracks under fire to pre-
vent supports getting up.

The German garrison on this front belonged to the 199th
Division and 145th Division, and they were scattered about,
not in any definite trench system, but in rifle pits and slit
trenches just big enough to give cover to small groups and
outposts and machine-gun crews. The Australians went
over and routed out the German pits and holes with

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 393

bayonets and bombs. The Germans fought for their lives
in some of these places, but at least 150 were killed accord-
ing to the estimate of Australian officers, and the prisoners
now number 200 of the 114th and 357th Infantry Reserve
Regiments. They include two officers, whom I saw this
morning, and who looked very haggard and worn young
men, with gaunt cheeks under their big shrapnel helmets,
which reached down to their shoulders. Among the
trophies brought back by the Australians, whose own
losses were extraordinarily light, were several machine-guns
and a big trench-mortar. It was more than a raid, for
the Australian line is now advanced on this side of Morlan-
court to a depth of 850 yards on that wide front of 2500
yards. It is an enterprise which will remind the enemy
that the initiative and the offensive spirit are not entirely on
his side. It is, however, only a minor action, compared
with the battles last month and those which will come this
month when the enemy is again ready to try another big
smash.

May 8
In spite of great gun-fire last night and early this morning
there seems to have been no infantry action on any large
scale along our front, though I hear of a small enterprise
by the Australians, who have again pushed forward their
line near Morlancourt, and also a hostile attack on about a
two-mile front south of Dickebusch Lake (south of Ypres),
where, according to early reports, the enemy has gained a
footing in our forward defences.

The continual rumbling of great guns, a loud, persistent
thundery beating of the air from various sectors of the
front, was last night so oppressive to the nerves that it was
impossible to avoid the thought that it was the prelude to
another immense battle. And again this morning after
dawn those awful guns were at work, as they had been
murmuring for hours through one's sleep, and one wakened

394 THE WAY TO VICTORY

with the belief that this day was to be one of terrific con-
flict.

Yet no news came over the wires or anyhow. Questions
were asked along all sectors. " Anything doing with you?"
"Any attack in your parts?"

And from these centres of information came back the
answer :

"Not guilty — quite quiet about here to-day."

Quite quiet, but with loud noise of fire from many of
our heavies doing their usual routine work of strafing
German roads and assembly places and ammunition dumps
and batteries.

Meanwhile there are wonderful May days after heavy
rain, and the fields of France this side of crater land are
a song of colour, with a tapestry of all the flowers that
Ronsard put into his poems in the May days of French
history, before high explosives had been invented.

Thursday
It is not everywhere easy for the enemy to assemble his
troops or concentrate his guns and ammunition stores on
his front for the next phase of his offensive. Albert is a
case in point.

From many points we have complete observation of his
positions there, as he has of ours from the other side of the
way, and needless to say we are making use of this direct
view by flinging over storms of shells whenever his trans-
port is seen crawling along the tracks of the old Somme
battlefields, or his troops are seen massing among their
shell-craters.

The town of Albert itself, where once until recent his-
tory the Golden Virgin used to lean downwards with her
babe outstretched above the ruins, is now a death-trap for
the German garrisons there and for any German gunners
who try to hide their batteries among the red-brick houses.

By day and night we pound their positions with high ex-
plosives, and soak them in asphyxiating gas. I went within

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 395

2000 yards of it yesterday, and looked down into that place
through which I passed hundreds of times during the
Somme battles and afterwards, so that every broken house
and factory and wall was familiar to me there, and I saw
our heavies at work upon it. It was a wonderful May day,
as to-day, and the sun shone through a golden haze upon
that town in the valley and upon the barren land above it —
and for miles around it — which two years ago was swept
and blasted by enormous shell-fire. The Golden Virgin
has gone, but the church tower still stands, all torn and
jagged, with its red and white brickwork horribly mangled.
It was always an ugly little town, with its modern brick
houses and straight-lined factories, but it meant much to us
as a place of historic memories, because all our armies
passed at some time or another through its narrow streets,
and the sinister desolation of its Grande Place — looking up
for a moment at that strange leaning figure of Divine
Motherhood — to the fields of fire beyond.

So as I looked into Albert yesterday and saw our shells
smashing through, and then away up the Albert-Bapaume
road, past the white rim of the great mine-crater of La
Boiselle to the treeless slopes of Posieres, and over all that
ground of pits and ditches to High Wood on the distant
right, with its few dead stumps of trees, it was hard to
believe — even though I knew — that all this was in the area
of the German army, that the white winding lines freshly
marked upon this bleak landscape were new German
trenches, and that the enemy's outposts were less than 2000
yards from where I stood. Some siege gunners lying on
their stomachs and observing the enemy's lines for some
monsters I had seen on the way up — monsters that raised
their snouts slowly like elephants' trunks before bellowing
out with an earthquake roar, annihilating all one's senses
for a second — passed the remark to me that Albert isn't
the town it was, and that Fritz must be having a thin time
there. They also expressed the opinion that the Albert-
Bapaume road was not a pleasant walk for Germans on a

396 THE WAY TO VICTORY

sunny afternoon. I did not dispute these points with them,
for they are beyond argument. Our big shells were smash-
ing into Albert and its neighbourhood from many heavy
batteries, raising volcanic explosions there, and our shrap-
nel was bursting over the tracks in white splashes.

One of the gunners, lying flat on his stomach with tele-
phone to his ear, raised himself a little and said, "They're
going to do a shoot, with an aeroplane to spot for them."
I saw the bird come out for this job, flying low through a
blue sky, and not flurried because German Archies began to
send black bursts about its wings.

The siege gunners were chatty again. "Fritz got it in
the neck the other evening," said one of them. "All the
guns ceased fire, and a swarm of our aeroplanes came out
— more than fifty of them — and dropped bombs on an as-
sembly of German troops down there and battery positions.
They made some fine rosy clouds when the red-brick ruins
went up in dust. It was a great sight."

There was a great noise yesterday, but it was mostly our
noise, for which I was duly thankful. Scores of our
heavies were scattered about behind the lines, where the
woods are in the first glory of their green, all light and
feathery in the sun, and where the grass was merry with
gold and silver, except where German shells had opened
deep pits, horribly fresh, so that one knew the enemy had
been searching around here for any death he could find.

I described in my message yesterday how the noise of
gun-fire was so steady and loud during the night and early
morning over a wide extent of the front that along all
sectors of it there were inquiries as to attacks, answered
by assurances that there was nothing doing. But, after all,
there was something doing against one body of our troops
in Flanders, and, judging from later information gained
by our officers there, it looks as though the enemy had in-
tended a big attack by at least five divisions, though the
plan was thwarted by our intense gun-fire.

What actually happened was an assault upon Ridge

THE NORTHERN ATTACK 397

Wood and its neighbourhood, north of Vierstraat, on the
French left, opposite Kemmel Hill, extending along the
lines of the French themselves, though not so heavily ex-
cept in artillery fire. That was intense, prolonged, and ter-
rific for several hours of the night and just before dawn.

Behind the German lines, as we now know, a new Ger-
man division previously untouched in this offensive — the
52nd Reserve — had just relieved the 3rd Guards, who, as I
have already told, have been badly mauled with their Cock-
chafers in recent fighting, and on their left — our right, of
course — there was the 56th German Division, with others
opposite the French front. All these men were crowded
into narrow assembly grounds, and they did not have quiet
hours before the moment of attack. They had hours of
carnage in the darkness. British and French guns were
answering back the German bombardment with the heaviest
fire. French howitzers and long-muzzled fellows, which
during recent weeks I have seen crawling through Flanders
with the "Cornflowers," as the French soldiers call them-
selves, crowded about them on gun-limbers and transport
wagons, and muddy horses, who have travelled long kilo-
metres, were now in action from their emplacements be-
tween the ruined villages of the Flemish war zone, and with
their little brothers, the soixante-quinses, their blood-
thirsty little brothers, were savage in their destructive
and harassing fire.

I have seen the soixante-quinze at work, and have heard
the rafale des tambours de la mort, the "ruffle of the drums
of death," as the sound of their fire is described by all
soldier writers of France. It was that fire, that slashing
and sweeping fire, which helped to break up any big plan of
attack against the French troops yesterday morning, and
from those assembly places a great part of the German in-
fantry never moved all day, but spent their time it seems in
carrying back their wounded.

So it was with another division of German troops, in-
tended for an assault on our lines further north. Our field-

398 THE WAY TO VICTORY

batteries and heavies laid down a protective barrage of
shell-fire of terrible intensity, and here also any German
plan of movement was "immobilized," a scientific word for
slaughter and the destruction of hostile preparations. But
in spite of the bombardment on the 52nd Reserve Divi-
sion, those German troops, in their first baptism of fire in
this offensive, came out against our men in Ridge Wood.
Our forward system of trenches there had been wrecked
by German shelling, and our line had been withdrawn
from it, in order to save life, to positions behind the wood,
where our machine-gunners had a good field of fire and
where it was better to organize counter-attacks. As the
German soldiers advanced they were sprayed by machine-
gun fire, so that many fell, but were able to take the line of
upheaved trenches and to penetrate Ridge Wood. That is
all. Our old trenches gave them no cover. Ridge Wood
gave them no hiding-place, for it is only a collection of tat-
tered tree-stumps, and those Germans lay out there, losing
more men as the hours passed. Then in the evening some
of our men — Seaforths, I think — made a counter-attack,
clearing the enemy out of the wood and back beyond our
original line.

It was not a good day for those German divisions in
Flanders — one more fresh division has been scorched — and
it is worse for them, because very likely they may have to
try again in order to carry out the plans of their High
Command, who are anxious to get this ground in order to
make an easier way up to Ypres, which, as I have already
said, they are anxious to get for political advertisement,
though there is little of military value in its ruins, except the
memory of our gallant dead and of all those who have
walked through its sinister streets to Hell Fire Corner and
the fields across the Menin road.

*B«S